Going Green - The Psychology of Sustainability in The Workplace

Going Green: The Psychology of
Sustainability in the Workplace

Edited by Dean Bartlett, London Metropolitan University
February 2011
Contents
Chapter Page
1 Introduction: The psychology of sustainability in the workplace 1
Dean Bartlett, London Metropolitan Business School
2 Green recruitment, development and engagement 6
Anna Kane, Ampleo.
3 Greening your organisation: The case of the Environment Agency 18
Julian Feasby and Karen Wells, The Environment Agency
4 Green buildings: Understanding the role of end user behaviour 31
Mindy Hadi & Chloe Halfhide, BRE
5 Green organisational performance: Behavioural change interventions 36
based on the theory of planned behaviour
Richard Parker, Boots Opticians
6 Green behaviour: Barriers, facilitators and the role of attributions 47
Richard Plank, City University.
7 Green behaviour: Differences in recycling behaviour between the 59
home and the workplace
Seonaidh McDonald, Robert Gordon University
8 Green behaviour change: HOT topics 65
Mike Page and Nadine Page, University of Hertfordshire
9 Green behaviour change: A case study of Eco Concierge 76
Karen Anderton and Kirsten Jack, Eco Concierge.
10 Promoting environmental behaviour in the workplace: 84
A survey of UK organisations
Lara Zibarras & Catrin Ballinger, City University
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Introduction
Dean Bartlett, London Metropolitan University
This report draws together a range of research and case studies which were developed as
part of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology Going
Green Symposium held in London in 2010. Its aim is to provide an illustration of the
important contribution that the field of work and organisational psychology can make to
understanding and promoting green behaviour in the workplace.
This first introductory chapter outlines what is in the other chapters, reflecting on their
key messages and summarising some of the issues which they individually and collectively
raise. The report contains a range of useful material for ‘people specialists’ in
organisations, including a number of vignettes and case studies particularly aimed at
practitioners, alongside the sorts of theoretical material and research results you would
expect from the specialist area of occupational psychology which applies the science of
psychology to the workplace.
The green organisational imperative

The issue of climate change and environmental sustainability is one which has become
central for organisations during the past decade. Numerous arguments have been
advanced as to why organisations should become more environmentally friendly; however,
despite widespread acceptance of this green imperative, progress remains slow. Whilst
considerable debate continues to rage over the relative influence of innovative new green
technology and the respective roles of governments, international bodies and private and
public sector organisations, the simple fact is that, in the final analysis, going green comes
down to individual behaviour. We all have a part to play and the role of organisations will
necessarily be enacted through the people that work in and for them.
The second paper in this collection therefore starts by considering how organisations can
recruit staff to do their jobs in an environmentally friendly way. Drawing on theoretical
approaches to motivation and work engagement, it argues that a strategic approach is
needed which integrates system-wide influences upon not only the recruitment of staff, but
also their subsequent development and the way in which jobs must be redesigned to
achieve greener performance and better rewards for both the employee and the
organisation.
One of the key contributions that psychology can make to the greening agenda lies in what
it has to say about the behaviour of individuals and how organisations can facilitate
behaviour change towards greener alternatives. The third paper in the report paints a
particularly fascinating picture of how an organisation consisting largely of environmental
specialists – the Environment Agency – has improved its own environmental performance.
It provides a revealing account of how to influence the behaviour of the workforce and
contains a number of impressive examples of good environmental practice, along with
some practical lessons about how to achieve them which are sure to be of interest for other
The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 1

organisations in their attempts to green their operations. These papers highlight the
importance of really engaging staff in order to harness their contribution – a key principle
underlying effective practice in this area which is emphasised in numerous other
contributions to this report and which must, therefore, be one of the overall key take-home
messages that readers can take back to their own organisations and apply, perhaps by
following some of the examples outlined herein.
Adjusting to new ways of working

Of course, changing individuals’ behaviour within existing organisational systems and
processes is only one element of the puzzle which we must solve if we are to overcome the
problem of sustainability. A further piece of that puzzle comes from green technology. The
argument has been based by many commentators on a premise that the ‘old’ way of doing
things in contemporary organisations, which are part of our existing, carbon-intensive
economy, is not sustainable and therefore creative green innovations are needed in order
to work out new ways of living in a post-carbon economy of the future. What can the
psychology of workplace behaviour contribute to our understanding of how individuals
adjust to these types of ‘eco-innovations’? The fourth paper in the report addresses this
very topic by examining the role of user behaviour in ‘low-carbon’ green buildings. Based
upon research from the BRE Building Design Consultancy, it provides a number of
fascinating insights into how end-users of this technology adapt to such innovations in the
workplace and how we can model the influence of their behaviour upon the effectiveness
of such products. It shows that individuals will adapt and even sabotage technology aimed
at greening the operations of an organisation to suit their needs. Such technology needs,
therefore, to take full account of the role of end-user behaviour in its design if it is to
achieve its desired objective of improved efficiency and lowered energy use. As the pace of
eco-innovation shifts from an incremental, responsive mode where it can be thought of a
reaction to inefficiencies which take place within existing technological, social,
organisational and cultural milieu, the role of such insights from psychology will become
essential in developing a more strategic approach to the larger scale transformation of
organisations.
Green work performance

In one sense, then, going green in the workplace is about developing particular
interventions which are aimed at improving green organisational performance and the
fifth and sixth papers in this volume look at how this can be achieved through
psychological means based on two very well-established psychological literatures. The fifth
paper provides us with a special focus on the theory of planned behaviour, while the sixth
concentrates on the role of attributions and also considers some of the barriers and
facilitators of green behaviour at work – more of which are enumerated in some of the
other papers in the report. These contributions highlight the huge potential that
psychological insights into behavioural change interventions can provide – a body of
knowledge which remains a relatively under-exploited resource when it comes to going
green in the workplace, as the vast majority of research in this field focuses upon green
behaviour in the home as opposed to work settings. The field of occupational psychology
2 Going Green:
has a large number of such well-established theories of behaviour change and maintenance
upon which to draw in the design and implementation of green interventions, as well as
new insights which are emerging from cutting-edge research and theory in areas such as
‘self-regulation theory’ (i.e. theories concerning the role of the self-concept and related
constructs in behavioural regulation), for example.
The theme of the influence of the work context upon green behaviour continues in the
seventh paper which raises the issue that, even when individuals are keen to recycle, they
do not always translate this green behaviour into the workplace. The survey reports that
more people recycle at home than they do at work across a wide range of recyclable
materials, but even those who do recycle at work do so less than they do at home. One
reason behind this difference could be that recycling facilities are not provided at all
workplaces, but the findings also suggest that there are other factors which are potentially
important and which organisations need to consider in the design and implementation of
recycling schemes. Such issues include raising awareness of what, if any, recycling
arrangements have been put in place and also providing clear guidance about to staff
about their responsibilities and those of the organisation in relation to recycling as well as
precise instructions about what staff have to do in order for arrangements to be effective,
for example whether or not staff need to sort rubbish or just put it all in the same bin.
Following on from the results reported in this paper, it would seem that encouraging
people to recycle at work is about more than simply engaging them. Even employees who
have high levels of motivation and performance in relation to recycling behaviour at home
appear to recycle less in the workplace setting and so while previous papers in this volume
have highlighted the importance of an approach which draws upon the psychological
literature around employee engagement, there are other issues which need also to be
considered from the organisations perspective.
The psychology of going green

As the eighth paper in this collection argues, an examination of the ways in which
psychology can be harnessed to design successful interventions and bring about positive
change in the service of the environment reveals that, while there remain a variety of
psychological techniques which remain to be applied to this important topic, there is also
much that can be done to improve the relatively few interventions that have been
attempted. Psychology has much to say about how green behaviour is initiated, the
processes that are important for understanding green attitudes and values, the execution
and control of particular types of behaviour and the factors which are key to maintaining
behaviour over time, particularly over periods which extend beyond that in which an
intervention actually takes place. There are a wide number of theoretical ideas, research
findings and conceptual rubrics which are potentially useful and in order to help make
sense of this rich selection of evidence and approaches, the paper offers a simple
mnemonic which organises some of this work into three categories or topics, consisting of
habits, opportunities and thoughts (‘HOT topics’). Many parallels may be drawn between
individual behaviour change in the domain of pro-environmental behaviour and in other
domains of life and there are some striking similarities between this simple but powerful
framework and that which has been applied to changing the behaviour of dieters towards
food consumption, for example. Clearly, then we are only at the beginning of

understanding how both new and more well-established psychological approaches can be
employed by organisations in their journey towards going green and the ‘HOT topics’
outlined in this paper, along with related tools such as the psychometric instrument which
it mentions, provide an encouraging move in the right direction.
The ninth paper presents a case study of Eco Concierge – an organisation which specialises
in individual behaviour change and employee engagement in relation to sustainability. It
outlines the central importance of employee engagement and how, through challenging
ideas and removing barriers to green behaviour, individuals and organisations are able to
improve their sustainability. They highlight the fact that, in Britain a majority of people say
they would like to do more to live sustainably but do not do so because of a range of
practical and perceived barriers and they outline an approach which they have developed
to help overcome such issues and to enable both individuals and organisations to become
greener.
Current organisational praxes and future directions in the

psychology of sustainability in the workplace
The tenth and final paper in this report provides a fascinating insight into what UK
organisations are currently doing around the promotion of green behaviour at work. The
paper provides a snapshot of findings from a survey of UK organisations and explores the
different approaches that organisations are taking to encourage pro-environmental
behaviour among employees, the methods they are using and their effectiveness as well as
the key facilitators of employee engagement and barriers that organisations face. It
provides some very interesting, yet sobering, reading which put the other papers in this
report into context. Overall, the papers in this collection offer a range of psychological
theories, interventions and insights that have been applied in the area of sustainability in
organisations which are thrown into sharp relief when we consider what organisations
more generally are currently doing and how. From insights into the design of interventions
which are required to deliver incremental changes in efficiency practices, through to
sustaining long-term changes in behaviour in pursuit of a greener future, the psychology of
sustainability in the workplace is an emergent part of the developing vision for change
which constitutes the sustainability agenda for organisations. In the development and
formulation of interventions which are designed to bring about the changes required to
achieve that vision, we have seen that even the best-conceived and most well-meant ideas,
based upon the greenest of technological innovations, will still fail to achieve their desired
effect unless we take seriously the people issues which lie at the heart of the sustainability
solution. However there is also another side to the sustainability coin. Just as psychology
has much to offer by way of solutions to the problem of sustainability, it also provides an
insight into the causes of those problems which we would be wise to consider. Thus, the
flip-side of the argument is that it is precisely the way in which we behave as individuals that
got us into this mess in the first place - particularly in the developed world and, therefore,
as consumers. Until we begin to understand more fully how people’s motivations, desires
and senses of self and of belonging are played out under Western models of consumer-
driven global capitalism, the psychology of sustainability will be an incomplete one. As I
have argued elsewhere, some critics see nothing less than a ‘transformational revolution’ in
the way in which we produce and consume across the globe is required if we are to make
4 Going Green:
any significant progress towards sustainability. Getting a handle on the psychology
underlying the deeper causes of the problem and more radical changes that are required
to solve it - in particular, the role that corporations can play in bringing about such
changes – is an area which the papers in this collection touch upon only tangentially. It is
an area we have yet to cover and so it is where, in my opinion, the future of the psychology
of sustainability lies.
Professor Dean Bartlett, PhD, CPsyhol, CSci

Director of the Management Research Centre,
London Metropolitan Business School.
E-mail: D.Bartlett@londonmet.ac.uk.

Green recruitment, development and engagement
Anna Kane, Ampleo
This chapter considers how organisations can achieve environmental objectives through
their staff by recruiting, developing and motivating them to do their jobs in an
environmentally friendly way. In considering the drivers behind why organisations ‘go
green’ and the means by which they do so, it draws upon theory and research on
motivation and work engagement which help organisations to understand what motivates
and engages staff and how to handle the processes of organisational change involved in
building ‘green’ performance indicators into employees’ job roles and the impact of these
changes across an organisation in the context of redesigning such jobs.
Green business is big business these days. Going green, or at least being seen to be green
brings benefits to the organisation such as enhanced reputation, competitive advantage,
reduced operating costs and increased margins and longer term benefits such as non-
reliance on virgin materials. Unsurprisingly, therefore, many organisations are keen to
espouse their environmental credentials. Sometimes this might be nothing more
substantial than a clever marketing campaign, otherwise known as ‘greenwashing’. For
many organisations however, it is driven by a genuine organisational objective to be
environmentally responsible. Of course, a starting point is to ensure that the organisation
has low energy light bulbs installed, recycling bins in the corner of each office and
increased use of renewable energy such as solar power. However, a strategic approach will
go further than this to involve much deeper and systemic root and branch reform,
redesigning jobs and ultimately driving the recruitment and development of staff.
I would like to illustrate some of the issues involved through an imaginary vignette. Take an
organisation recruiting to fill the vacancy of a Design Manager. The organisation designs
and manufactures electrical items for use in household kitchens and has whittled down the
applicants to two. The first of these applicants, let’s call her Nita, has an excellent track
record of managing teams who design user-friendly products. She can manage her budgets
effectively, handles personnel management issues successfully and keeps an eye on her
competitors.
The second applicant, let’s call her Valerie, also has an excellent track record of managing
a team who designs user-friendly products. Valerie encourages the team to design products
that are energy efficient (saving the customer money and thus making products more
competitive) and to use recycled materials (again, more marketable products with resource
security for the organisation). She also manages her budgets effectively, and has a carbon
budget (giving senior management data to report to shareholders, whilst enhancing her
own career). She handles personnel management issues successfully and arranges remote
working (giving staff a better work-life balance and saving carbon). Valerie also keeps an
eye on her competitors, but they probably keep a sharper eye on her!
6 Going Green:
From the outside, taking an environmentally friendly approach to business can appear to
be a very specific, restrictive or niche marketing strategy. However, when considering the
case of Valerie and Nita it is possible to see how an organisation benefits widely from
recruiting ‘green’ staff (or are they just ‘smart’ staff?). If the above organisation recruited
Valerie, they would have a much better ‘all rounder’ as an employee. Valerie’s skills,
approach and thinking are more progressive than Nita’s. Valerie understands the business
world and natural world are inextricably linked. Nita is not demonstrating an ability to gain
competitive edge. Her team’s products are made using virgin materials that may become
expensive as the resources dwindle, she isn’t offering her staff the best work-life balance
which would result in increased productivity and loyality to the organisation. She isn’t
developing their skills to make them the most progressive designers in the industry. Nita is
not demonstrating a carbon and cost saving approach to her work, which would improve
sales and increase profit margins. Therefore she is failing to enhance her own career
prospects and the reputation of the business. The comparison of Valerie and Nita
demonstrates some of the benefits of taking an environmentally sound approach to
running an organisation. But moving beyond this example, what are the drivers for
organisations? Roth & Bansal (2000) revealed three motivators that induce corporate
ecological responsiveness: competitiveness, complying with the legislation and ecological
responsibility.
Research conducted by Ampleo, a firm of Occupational Psychologists, revealed more
reasons why organisations feel the need to ‘go green’. These include cost reduction,
energy security, attraction and retention of staff, staff wellbeing, enhanced staff skills and
productivity, positive business reputation and superior services and products. A number of
writers (e.g. Savitz, 2006) make reference to the triple bottom line (economy, environment
and social) or what has been referred to as ‘the 3 P’s’; people, profit, planet. Sustainability
is a fundamental principle of smart management, and the triple bottom line is a measure
of success which provides a broader rubric within which organisations can consider their
efforts in relation their corporate responsibilities. Esty and Winston (2006) see smart
companies as the ones who get ahead of the green curve and lower both financial and
operational risk. Their environmental strategies provide added degrees of freedom to
operate, profit and grow. Any organisation that enjoys the benefits listed here could be
better described as a ‘smart’ organisation than a ‘green’ organisation.
How does an organisation seek to green itself?

One of the wonderful things about seeking to reduce an organisation’s impact on the
environment is that so much of it is measurable. An organisation might start with a basic
baseline energy measurement; one year’s worth of electricity, on-site fuel use (gas, for most
of us), vehicle fuel use, and air travel. They then seek to reduce it by 10 per cent the
following year. 10:10 is a hugely successful campaign encouraging business, education,
organisations and individuals to do just
this. www.1010global.org; a campaign that
started small and rapidly went global due
to its simplicity and positive approach.
Setting objectives is important in any
organisation, and 10:10 helps

organisations to think about what they might want to achieve in simple terms.
Organisations might also think about an Environmental Management System (EMS). EMS
refers to the management of an organisation's environmental programs in a
comprehensive, systematic, planned and documented manner. It includes the
organisational structure, planning and resources for developing, implementing and
maintaining policy for environmental protection.
Why low-energy light bulbs and fuel efficient cars aren’t enough
Technical solutions to energy challenges can help an organisation achieve its reduction
goals significantly, but what can often be overlooked is the need to plan the behaviour
change. An organisation’s 10:10 efforts to reduce vehicle emissions by 10 per cent over one
year are likely to require a combination of approaches:
■ fuel efficient vehicles;
■ reduction in miles driven; and
■ enhanced driving skills.
So simply purchasing fuel efficient vehicles isn’t enough, and organisations purchasing fuel
efficient vehicles will benefit by getting the vehicle drivers ‘on board’ with the change.
Changing behaviour to reduce the amount of miles driven and enhancing drivers’ skills
will require skills development and a change in systems and procedures.
How and why should an organisation recruit and develop staff so it

can ‘go green’?
An organisation expects individuals to be motivated to do their job in a direction that is
aligned with the organisation’s objectives, with sufficient vigour and to sustain this over a
period of time and in the face of obstacles.
Will a sales executive who drives around the country behave in line with the organisation’s
10:10 objectives to reduce petrol use, and save money? Will she drive in a fuel efficient
manner? (Direction of behaviour).
Will she do so when driving on motorways and in built-up areas? (Vigour of behaviour).
Will she do this every day or just for the first week after someone has pointed out the
benefits? (Persistence of behaviour).
In total, how motivated is this individual to drive in a fuel efficient manner?
The difficulty with motivation is that managers cannot directly motivate individuals.
Motivation comes from within the employee; it is unobservable and cannot be altered at
will by a manager. What is important is that managers do have direct control over the
selection process, which has some influence on the skills and knowledge of those doing the
work. In addition, these things can be improved with training and development which is
also under the manager’s control.
Motivation stems from an individual’s needs and the perceived difference between ideal or
actual self. So for example, someone may feel a difference between the skills they have, and
the skills their manager has given them credit for; they are motivated to be promoted to
address this gap. This person will then strive to meet goals, in the expectation that this
8 Going Green:
behaviour will lead to specific outcomes. The motive or driver for wanting a promotion
may be different, some may want the status, and others may want the pay rise. Either way,
these motives will energise someone into action. So the individual sets about behaving in a
certain way to achieve the goal of being promoted. They are likely to self monitor whether
such behaviour impresses the manager. If the outcome of a promotion is not achieved,
then the person may employ a different set of behaviours to achieve it, or re-evaluate
whether the goal is realistic.
A manager cannot directly influence whether someone desires something like a promotion.
Managers are however, able to provide an environment that offers a range of the following
rewards for the desired behaviour. Rewards can be intrinsic, extrinsic and social.
Figure 1: Motivational feeds
Psychological rewards that come from

the experience of work, or from being
part of an organisation; for example,
Intrinsic having an opportunity to use skills and
rewards
abilities, having a sense of challenge or
achievement, or having one’s efforts
recognised and appreciated. These rewards
come from inside the person and are
given by people to themselves, which can
only occur if the conditions they
experience allow them to feel this way.
Satisfaction
of needs and
expectations
Intrinsic Social
rewards rewards
Tangible benefits such as pay, fringe benefits, pensions, Obtained by being with other people,
conditions of work and security that individuals receive often by having a sense of common
in return for their efforts. Because these are provided purpose and obtaining reassurance or
by the organisation, how much is received is largely confirmation of identity, also have a
beyond the control of the individual. substantial psychological content.
Getting the balance right between the three will be nearly impossible as what may be
extrinsic for one person, will be intrinsic for another. But, however much people vary, most
individuals expect rewards of all three types and so the important point is to ensure all
three are offered.
There is often a general reliance on extrinsic motivators, possibly due to the difficulty of
understanding an individual’s pattern of needs, or the ease of providing extrinsic

motivators. Evidence does suggest though, that too high a level of extrinsic rewards tends
to damp down intrinsic motivation. (Deci 1972, Shalley and Oldham 1985)
A manager would also do well to consider what blocks there are to a motivated individual
completing their intended behaviour. The sales executive may become frustrated because
they are expected to rush from one appointment to the next (not only encouraging fuel
thirsty driving but stressful working conditions).
In the case of the individual looking for promotion, they may show adaptive behaviour to
circumvent barriers such as directly asking for feedback to gain the recognition needed. Or
they may show non-adaptive behaviour such as repression, suppression, projection, fixation
and so on.
But is it enough to simply create an environment where individuals have few blocks to the
desired behaviour and feel rewarded when they demonstrate it? If an organisation wants
certain types of behaviour and decision making to be embedded across the organisation
then a more in-depth and strategic approach is necessary.
Motivational theory points to job redesign, in particular job enrichment. Job enrichment
raises motivation by more than just expanding a job by horizontal enlargement (giving staff
more to do), it requires the job to be ‘enriched’. It involves a measure of vertical expansion
so the person has some authority over the planning, execution and control of the work.
Herzberg (1959) argues this will bring into play the more powerful intrinsic motivators.
This is also supported by Maslow’s needs hierarchy (1943), where self-actualisation needs
are virtually inexhaustible and are concerned with a person’s need to realise his full
potential.
Figure 2: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Often split into two sub-types. Needs for self-esteem concern an individual’s view
of him or herself; for instance having a sense of self-respect, self-confidence or
of doing something that is meaningful and worthwhile in a competent way.
Esteem by others is needed because a considerable part of our self-concept is
Self-actualisation obtained from signals about ourselves that we get from others (Argyle 1968,
Cooley 1964), and if other people indicate that their view of us is favourable as is
the one that we hold of ourselves, it is a highly rewarding experience.
Virtually inexhaustible and are concerned with a person’s need to realise his full
Esteem potential, and it is these that are said to drive humans to do things that have
never been done before.
Feelings of belonging, friendship or being loved, which can only be satisfied

Affiliation through social interaction. Needs of this type provide the motivation to
meaningful relationships and to gain (and give) support from (and to) others.
Consist of security, freedom from pain or harm, emotional security and well-
Security being, fairness, predictability and order.
The most basic of all and arise from the internal physical imbalances such as
Physiological hunger, thirst, warmth and shelter; they need to be satisfied at fairly infrequent
intervals.
10 Going Green:
Figure 3: Herberg’s Two-factor Theory (1959)
Mainly intrinsic in nature Features of the work environment rather

e.g. sense of achievement, recognition, than work itself eg. working conditions,
responsibility, the nature of the work status, company procedures, quality of
itself and prospect of supervision and interpersonal relations.
growth and (‘Hygiene’ indicates they are preventative as
advancement in medicine, they stop dissatisfaction
occurring).
The Work
Environment
Factors that If not present, can

produce good result in feelings that
feelings about the work situation is
work unsatisfactory
There are of course criticisms to both Maslow and Herzberg’s theories, for example there
is an assumption an individual has fulfilled all other needs in the hierarchy, and Herzberg’s
theory is regarded by some as an oversimplification (Burke, 1966 and Wood & LeBold, 1970).
Going back to Valerie and Nita, they both do the same job, however Valerie’s job is
enriched through the approach she takes. Valerie doesn’t necessarily have much more to
do than Nita, but she is achieving more by being smarter about how she goes about her
work.
As Clegg and Spencer (2007) point out, job design still remains a significant practical issue
for organisations. Hackman and Oldmans’s Job Characteristics Model (1976), which
supersedes the two-factor theory, is still the dominant theory in job design.
It is concerned with the following job characteristics that influence the motivation of the
job holder, in turn affecting her performance and well being.
Skill variety: the extent to which the job requires a mix of skills, the exercise of which is
valued by the job occupant.
Task identity: the extent to which the job is a ‘whole’ one, that is, it has a beginning and an
end and results in the completion of a tangible, identifiable outcome.
Task significance: the extent to which the job occupant perceives that the job ‘matters’, in
terms of affecting the work or lives of other people inside or outside the organisation.
Autonomy: the extent to which the job gives its occupant the freedom and discretion to
plan the work and decide how it is carried out.
Feedback: the extent to which doing the job gives its occupant clear information about the
effectiveness of his or her efforts.

These features influence the critical psychological states:
Meaningfulness: the degree to which the person experiences the job as one that makes a
valuable and worthwhile contribution.
Responsibility: the extent to which the person perceives that he or she is personally
responsible for the successful completion of the work.
Knowledge of results: the extent to which the person has a clear understanding and
evidence of how effectively he or she performs the job.
The outcomes of the critical psychological states are high internal work motivation, high
‘growth’ satisfaction, high general job satisfaction and high work effectiveness.
The argument is therefore that enriching jobs by redesigning them to ensure job holders
undertake their work in an environmentally friendly way will not only help embed pro-
environmental behaviour across the organisation, it will also result in more productive
staff.
But will giving staff the extra demands on their workload just lead to burn-out? Parker and
Wall (1998) see a number of ‘costs’ to job enlargement and enrichment. Difficulties of
recruiting appropriate staff, employees requiring more training and employees being more
likely to experience mental overload and strain. Maslach (1993) attributed burnout to high
job demands that drain the employee’s energy. Exhaustion leads the employee to withdraw
mentally which prevents proper performance.
These challenges presented as ‘costs’ can be overcome. The increased difficulties of
recruiting appropriate staff may be true, but the continual improvement to recruitment
methods including online and technical solutions enables organisations to use smarter and
more useful recruitment techniques to overcome these challenges. Furthermore, in terms
of attracting quality candidates, prospective job applicants are more likely to pursue jobs
from socially responsible firms, than from firms with poor social performance reputations
(Greening & Turban, 2000).
Employees requiring more training will also be a most likely outcome, but whether this is
best viewed as a cost, is up for debate. Investing in employees by providing ‘job resources’,
such as further training, is seen to have multiple organisational benefits including reduced
staff turnover and enhanced productivity. The notion of ‘spend to save’ comes into play
and so what may be an immediate cost to the organisation should result in a future saving
and/or increased profitability. Training an organisation’s vehicle drivers to drive in a more
fuel efficient way is certainly preferable to recruiting new drivers with existing fuel efficient
driving skills. The cost of training will quickly be recovered through the reduced cost of
petrol. All future drivers recruited into the organisation will either have the petrol efficient
driving skills or go on immediate training.
Finally, will employees experiencing mental overload and strain – ‘burnout’? The example
of enhancing driving skills through training should actually reduce strain rather than
increase it. The notion of redesigning jobs is more about enrichment rather than
enlargement. Enlargement is more likely to lead to mental overload and strain.
Enrichment should not, as long as any skills gaps are filled through training provision and
staff development. Coaching may be a more suitable approach than training as it can help
12 Going Green:
the individual work through the change process and find ways to adapt and learn how to
do their job differently.
What is clear from the research is that involving employees in the redesign of their jobs
is crucial to its success (Parker & Wall, 1998; Clegg & Spencer, 2007; Pasmore &
Friedlander, 1982).
Despite handling the challenges to job redesign, can organisations be assured that job
redesign is sufficient, or is there more to be done? Job or work engagement is a relatively
recent theory that has emerged since the turn of the century. It is a motivational concept.
Work engagement is a positive, fulfilling, affective-motivational state of work-related
wellbeing that can be seen as the opposite of burnout. Engaged employees have high levels
of energy, and are enthusiastically involved in their work (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter &
Taris, 2008).
Job resources, such as social support from colleagues and supervisors, performance
feedback, skill variety and autonomy, and learning opportunities are positively associated
with work engagement. (Bakker & Leiter, 2010). Work engagement and job resource
theory can be seen as overlapping with motivational theory, and complementing it. Job
resources play either an intrinsic motivational role because they foster an employee’s
growth, learning and development, or they play an extrinsic role; instrumental in achieving
work goals. Job resources are seen to become more salient and gain their motivational
potential when employees are confronted with high job demands (Bakker & Demerouti,
2007).
Work engagement thrives in settings that demonstrate strong connections between
corporate and individual values. This is a two-way process, not only should the organisation
promote its values to employees, it should also understand and promote what the
employees value (Bakker & Leiter, 2010).
How are things going to change?

How do organisations get to the stage where things like staff designing energy and
resource efficient products happens as a matter of routine? Changing organisational
culture is critical. Cameron and Quinn (2006) talk about culture, ‘an important factor in
accounting for organisational performance is that it encompasses the taken-for-granted
values, underlying assumptions, expectations, collective memories and definitions present
in an organisation. It represents “how things are around here”. It reflects the prevailing
ideology people carry round in their head. It conveys a sense of identity to employees,
provides unwritten and often unspoken guidelines for how to get along in an
organisation.’
An organisation redesigning jobs and seeking to enhance work engagement will go
through cultural change and should be thinking along the lines of The Cycle of
Organisational Change and Progression diagram on the next page as a process.
The diagram echoes parts of Kotter’s ‘Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change’.
Kotter recognises that organisations are pushed more and more to reduce costs, improve
the quality of services, locate new opportunities for growth and increase productivity. This
description easily fits an organisation trying to become more environmentally responsible.

Figure 4: The Cycle of Organisational Change and Progression
Establish the Strategy and vision

Team
importance of chance within development
building
organisation
Plan Longer Understanding

short term wins term strategies individual
and feeding to sustain reaction to
back results change change
Action planning The communication

strategy
Establish the importance of change within an organisation: If the organisation does not
sense the importance of the need to change, individuals are unlikely to change. Why
should they? It is therefore essential to highlight the drivers behind the change. The
Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) have now linked Capital
Funding to Carbon Management, and if universities do not produce a credible carbon
management plan which has been signed off, HEFCE will withhold 40 per cent of a
university’s capital funding. This, amongst other key drivers, is what led the University of
Brighton to set themselves a commendable and challenging target of achieving 50 per cent
carbon reduction in 5 years.
Team building: Any project, programme or initiative requires a team to lead it, so this
applies to culture change too. Because change programmes are notoriously hard to lead, it
is essential to have a team of credible, powerful and committed individuals who have the
expertise to represent and lead a cross section of the organisation through the change.
Strategy and vision development: A vision is essential. It builds a picture of what the
organisation is striving to achieve. Without vision, the best individuals can do is operate
within the remit of their job. With a vision, they can consider whether their actions are
contributing towards reaching the vision. For example an organisation such as the
University of Brighton (UoB) could have the vision of being a centre of excellence; a low
carbon university that attracts quality staff and students. Employers who value low carbon
skills and ethos in their workers will want to employ UoB students due to the exceptional
courses that promote low carbon working. The strategy is a plan that describes how the
vision will be achieved, for example lecturers enhancing their courses, by paying necessary
attention to the emergence of a low carbon industry.
14 Going Green:
Understanding individual reaction to change: Personality theory such as Myers Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI) can be useful in helping us understand how individuals react to change.
Some individuals embrace change whilst others do everything they can to resist it. Taking
the time to consider how individuals are likely to react helps an organisation prepare to
handle it. Directors and managers at all levels can learn how to respond to the individuals
on the teams they are leading through change.
There is also an argument for conducting an audit to measure and understand staff’s
perspectives on the pending change. The Ampleo Employee Engagement Survey©
measures the following:
■ Individuals’ existing attitudes towards climate change and the environment, and their
motivation to undertake pro-environmental behaviour in the workplace.
■ The values employees hold about environmental matters in the workplace. These
values can be thought of in the context of organisational culture.
■ How individuals react on an emotional level to language that is frequently used when
communicating environmental issues.
The output, an organisational profile, can then be used as a benchmark and starting point
of understanding about the employees for those leading the change.
The communication strategy: Kotter provides some useful advice for effective
communication of change.
■ Keep it simple, focused and jargon free so it can be disseminated to large groups of
people.
■ Use metaphors, analogies and examples to communicate complicated ideas quickly
and effectively.
■ Use many different forums so that when the same message comes at people from six
different directions, it stands a better chance of being heard and remembered.
■ Repeat, repeat, repeat to transfer information in an otherwise cluttered world.
■ Walk the talk, or lead by example so that employees can see the top management
acting out the vision.
■ Listen and be listened to, to ensure it doesn’t turn into a one-way broadcast where
useful feedback is ignored and employees are inadvertently made to feel
unimportant.
Action Planning: Short term wins and feeding back results: Ideally short-term wins will
build momentum by being easy to implement, with high impact or high visibility. Few
people will be able to argue with them and short term wins will clearly support and relate
to the change effort. For example, removing one car-parking space and building a bike
shed sends out a clear message, only the very hardened car drivers can argue with the loss
of one car parking space and it clearly promotes low-carbon transport and healthy
lifestyles. The next step is to report back the results to the organisation, in this example the
feedback might be the number of car journeys saved, the total amount of weight lost by
staff members who cycled and the amount of money saved on petrol.
Action Planning: Longer term strategies to sustain change: Start by establishing the
barriers, identifying resistance to change. Based on the strategy, establish the different
areas that need to be considered and require planning. Decide what actions need to be
taken to implement change. Encourage action and activities.

The following can be barriers:
● Supervisors – some may not be on board
● Systems – not realigned with the change
● Skills – employees not skilled enough
● Structures – need to reflect vision
A few examples of areas for longer term planning:

● Office layout
● IT systems
● Recruitment
● Skills development
● Procurement
● Travel plans
The cycle is then repeated. Change requires persistence. The reasons for change are likely
to be different after one or two years of the organisation’s development and the
consequential steps will therefore need reviewing in light of this.
Smart green?
The evidence points organisations to embracing environmentally friendly strategies to
ensure behaviour is embedded across the organisation for long lasting culture change by
recruiting and developing staff to fit redesigned jobs. The provision of job resources will
lead to work engagement and the many benefits this brings. The overall outcome is not
only a green organisation but a smart organisation that attracts quality staff, retains staff
who are happy and productive. It is a cost efficient organisation, with competitive
advantages and a more secure and sustainable future.
References.
Bakker, A.B. & Demerouti, E. (2008). Towards a model of work engagement. Career
Development International, 13, 209–223.
Bakker, A.B. & Leiter, M.P. (2010). Work engagement; A handbook of essential theory and research.
Hove: Psychology Press.
Bakker, A.B., Schaufeli, W.B., Leiter, M. P. & Taris, T.W. (2008). Work engagement: An
emerging concept in occupational health psychology. Work & Stress, 22, 187–200.
Bansal, P. & Roth, K. (2000). Why companies go green: A model of ecological
responsiveness. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 717–736.
Burke. R.J. (1966). Are Herzberg’s motivators and hygienes unidimensional? Journal of
Applied Psychology, 50.
Cameron, K.S. & Quinn, R.E. (2006). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. New
York: John Wiley & Sons.
Clegg, C. & Spencer, C. (2007). A circular and dynamic model of the process of job design.
Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, 80, 321–339.
16 Going Green:
Collins (2209). Collins English Dictionary. (Complete & Unabridged 10th edn.). William
Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.
Deci, E.L. (1972). The effects of contingent and noncontingent rewards and controls on
intrinsic motivation. Organizational Behaviour and Human Performance, 8(2), 217–229.
Esty, C.D. & Winston, A.S. (2006). Green to gold; How smart companies use environmental strategy
to innovate, create value and build competitive advantage. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Greening, D.W. & Turban, D.B., (2000). Corporate social performance as a competitive
advantage in attracting a quality workforce. Business & Society, 39(3), 254–280.
Herzberg, F., Mausner, B. & Synderman, B. (1959). The motivation to work. London:
Granada.
Hackman, J.R. & Oldman, G.R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a
theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16, 250–279.
Kotter, J.P. (1996). Leading change. Harvard Business School Press.
Maslach, C. (1993). Burnout: a multidimensional perspective. In W. B. Schaufeli,
C. Maslach, & T. Marek (Eds.) Professional burnout: Recent developments in theory and
research (pp.19–32). Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis.
Maslow, A.H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper and Row
Pasmore, W. & Friedlander, F. (1982). Administrative Science Quarterly, 27, 343–362.
Parker, S. & Wall, T.D. (1998). Job and work design: organizing work to promote well-being and
effectiveness. London: Sage Publications
Savitz, A.W. (2006) The Triple Bottom Line, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Schaufeli, W.B. & Bakker, A.B. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship
with burnout and engagement: a multi-sample study. Journal of Organizational
Behaviour, 25, 293–315.
Shalley, C.E. & Oldham, G.R. (1985). Effects of goal difficulty and expected external evaluation on
intrinsic motivation: a laboratory study. Academy of Management Journal, 28(3), 628–640.
Wood, D.A. & LeBold, W.K., (1970). The multivariate nature of professional job
satisfaction. Personnel Psychology, 23.

Greening your organisation: The case of the Environment Agency
Julian Feasby and Karen Wells, The Environment Agency
The Environment Agency is a large employer with an annual budget of more than £1
billion and over 12,000 staff dispersed around England and Wales. It is our job to look after
your environment and make it a better place for people and wildlife. Given the nature of
our organisation, you might think that getting the right behaviours for ‘greening the
workplace’ should be easy. Not necessarily so, when you consider that people have
different ways of learning and responding to change and that well-informed people are
often the hardest to change.
Who we are
The Environment Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the
environment in England and Wales. It was set up under the Environment Act 1995 and
given certain duties and powers. We work with business, government and society to ensure
that air, land and water are looked after so that tomorrow’s generations inherit a cleaner,
healthier world.
There are some big challenges to face over the coming years. Climate change, population
growth and unsustainable resource use will all put significant pressures on the
environment. That’s why the Environment Agency’s current work is its most important yet.
We are part of the solution but only through working with others can we make a
difference.
We are a public body – around 60 per cent of our funding comes from Government and
the majority of the rest comes from various charges schemes. We are independent but work
closely with Government. We have a presence across all of England and Wales with regional
and area offices so that we can work closely with local bodies and communities.
Our work includes:
■ Regulating industry to protect the environment and human health – air pollution is
estimated to lead to a reduced life expectancy of about eight months per person in
the UK. Since the mid 1990s we have reduced the amount of sulphur dioxide
released into the air by 75 per cent and we regulate the EU emissions trading scheme
and carbon reduction commitment (CRC).
■ Taking action against those who don’t take their environmental responsibilities
seriously – every year we bring many offenders to justice, leading to substantial fines.
■ Protecting people from floods – we protect properties, communities and key
infrastructure (like roads, railways, power sub-stations and water treatment plants)
through flood protection schemes. Every £1 spent on protecting communities from
flooding saves £8 spent repairing flood damage over the lifetime of the scheme.
18 Going Green:
■ Helping business use resources more efficiently – fossil fuels (a finite resource) are
used up 300,000 times faster than the processes that created them. Waste is a valuable
resource and we encourage it to be put to productive use such as reuse, recycling and
producing energy.
■ Working with farmers to build their role as guardians of the environment – farming
and forestry cover over 80 per cent of the total land area of England and Wales. Some
2.2 million tonnes of soil are lost to erosion each year, much of which is washed into
rivers and streams.
■ Looking after wildlife and their habitats – each year more than 100 hectares of
saltmarsh are lost to rising sea-levels. Between 2004–10 we helped to create more than
2,700 hectares of new wetland and saltmarsh habitats and otters are returning to
rivers. They are now found in every county in England and Wales.
■ Working to create sustainable places – over the next 20 years the number of
households in England and Wales is projected to rise by 25–30 per cent. We work with
policy makers, planning authorities and local communities to make sure the natural
and built environment work well together and help to improve the quality of inner
city areas and parks by restoring rivers and lakes.
■ Tackling climate change – the ten warmest years on record have all occurred since
1997. Some climate change is now inevitable so we work to help society both adapt to
these changes and also take action to reduce its impacts. This includes regulating
important low carbon technologies such as nuclear power and some renewables.
■ Making sure there is enough good quality water for people and the environment –
water is precious and its demand will increase in the coming years. Fifteen per cent of
river catchments already have too much water drawn from them.
■ Managing fish stocks to conserve and maintain the diversity – Juvenile eel numbers in
Europe have reduced by 95 per cent compared to pre-1980 levels. Freshwater fish,
salmon and sea trout are also our priority.
Improving our own environmental performance

Whilst our work delivers substantial benefits to the environment, in carrying out that work
we inevitably have a negative impact on the environment. We operate from over 200
buildings ranging from city centre offices to small, remote depots. We use a wide variety of
assets in the course of our varied work, including pumping stations, boats and heavy plant.
We have to do a certain amount of operational travel to do our jobs and we buy all sorts of
services and products.
In the Environment Agency we try to be the best we can in everything we do. This includes
practising what we preach and encouraging others to do the same. We want to be an
exemplar and demonstrate leadership, not least on climate change action, as well as help
achieve the UK-wide strategy to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
We have been certified to ISO14001 since 2002 and EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit
Scheme) since 2004. These internationally recognised environmental management systems
are audited robustly every year to ensure that we work within the law, identify what is
important both corporately (such as sustainable purchasing) and operationally (such as
impact or risk to protected habitats and species), manage what is important and improve.

Over the past few years we have made good progress in reducing our impact. Against our
baseline years, by March 2010, we have:
■ reduced office energy consumption by 20 per cent per year, representing
14 million miles;
■ reduced mileage by 24 per cent per year;
■ reduced water use by 61 per cent per year;
■ recycled 76 per cent of our office waste per year; and
■ 66 per cent of aggregates used on our construction projects has come from secondary
or recycled sources.
We achieve external recognition for our work, ranging from Institute of Civil Engineering
Awards for the sustainability of our flood defence schemes through to awards from the
Energy Saving Trust for our fleet management. In 2009 we were named ‘Best big company
for employee engagement’ at the Sunday Times Best Green Companies awards. The audit
process for the award took place over several painstaking days, making us particularly
proud of winning and giving us much confidence in the way we work with our staff and
move forward.
We still have a lot of work to do. In 2009 we achieved a 14 per cent reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions (a key greenhouse gas) from a 2006 baseline of 66,000 tonnes in our
operations, and by 2015 we want a 33 per cent reduction.
Improving our own environmental performance is a corporate priority, one that can only
be successful through the hard work and engagement of our staff.
How do we engage our staff and change behaviour?

The scope of our work is broad and we recognise it will gradually become more
challenging for us to continue to make further environmental improvements. As we seek
further change we need to engage our staff in more creative and innovative ways.
Before engaging with staff you need to make sure that you have the right information and
clear messages to send:
■ Information is power
Naturally, you need information on what and where your environmental impact is. If you
don’t know you can’t work with the right people to change it or the way they view it and
use the information.
■ Get the context right
The information you have needs to be made relevant to who you are trying to influence.
For example, we use ‘per FTE (full-time equivalent)’ figures for some of our performance
data. It can work well for figures relating to office water and energy use as well as mileage
where staff can change their behaviour and directly influence the figure but it wouldn’t
work for operational water or energy use.
■ Organised communication
Plan the environmental messages that you want to promote. Our communications follow a
theme (such as transport or water) that runs for three months and allows us to reinforce
our message over that time. Where relevant, we link to global or national events or ‘days of
20 Going Green:
Example – Identifying and understanding
The pie chart below shows the various sources of our carbon dioxide emissions and gives
a flavour of the breadth of what we have to manage and where the biggest impact is
coming from.
The breakdown allows us to tackle each source and prioritise where we focus our efforts.
Pumping electricity (operational) is responsible for 33 per cent of our carbon dioxide
emissions but improvement is not easy. Our pumping activity demonstrates this. We
pump water to:
■ help water companies to provide water as a resource for homes and business on an
ongoing basis (such as in the east of England), or as required to;
■ ease drought conditions or prevent flooding.
This means that we are responsible for a lot of carbon dioxide emissions whatever the
weather. Dry conditions require more pumping to prevent water levels in our waterways
reaching dangerously low levels for our fish and aquatic species and allow for water to
be drawn for use by businesses and society. Wet conditions require pumping to prevent
floods.
Most of our historic efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have been associated
with travel and buildings but this pie chart showed that we needed to address our
pumping activities. We are challenging standards that have been in place for many years
to pump at given time scales or to ensure an upper or lower level for a watercourse.
We had to change perception so we started to inject this pie chart into our work
wherever we could. We provided it to senior managers, who could then use it with their
own functions and teams. We included it in as many of our communications as possible
and generally pestered people with it so it could not be avoided. This has led to each
region developing carbon reduction plans which identify changes that can be made that
will improve the efficiency of the pumping equipment itself but also the parameters of
the pumping involved.

action’ so we can take advantage of the interest that staff may have developed in their own
time. For example, in June–August we have the transport theme. It links with Bike to Work
day in June.
■ Patience is a virtue
Manage expectations and recognise that larger organisations take time to change. Senior
managers as well as staff need to know why it takes time. The 10:10 challenge is the UK’s
2010 campaign for businesses to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 10 per cent, a
challenge that larger organisations will find hard to achieve whether they are novices to
reducing their environment impact or well along the path. You have to identify the
Environment Agency Building Energy Usage
sources, have a robust baseline, investigate options and work within the lead in times for
policy changes and kit installations as well as change behaviour.
The graph below demonstrates the level of reduction we have been able to make in our
buildings energy use (KWh) over the last five years – steady but also able to be maintained.
Getting staff to work for you

The science behind behaviour change states that staff need to be both willing to act but
also to have the ability to act. Any attempts to change behaviour needs both of these if the
change is to work.
We have chosen not to over-complicate our challenge by working with psychological
categorisations but it is useful to understand some basics about what motivates people.
People tend to fall into three categories that describe our willingness to act and motivate
our behaviour:
■ pioneers – they tend to be good at seeing the bigger picture and are likely to take
action because they believe it is the ‘right thing to do’.
■ prospectors – esteem driven, they care about what others think of them. Taking
action on climate change needs to be seen as ‘cool’ to appeal to this group.
22 Going Green:
Dealing with staff that are well educated and scientifically minded
■ Be bold and stick to your guns
On one of our sites there was uproar when we replaced paper towels with energy efficient
hand driers in the toilets. We checked the science but either option could be argued as
the best environmental choice. We made a decision and moved forward. What followed
was a period of discontent. Thirty-eight staff (approximately a fifth of the staff based at
that site) contacted our team to complain, including various scientific data to back up
their arguments. Certain staff used toilet paper instead and caused a hygiene issue when
the toilet paper ran out part way through the day. However, it was short lived; in little
over two weeks, staff accepted the change and no problems have occurred since.
Sometimes there is no right answer so the correct move is to pick one and stick to it.
■ Accept that they may try to sabotage with science
This poster is one of four designs that were developed to display at sites across the organisation
and to ‘pop up’ on computer screens. We received 20 e-mails informing us that if we put
carbon dioxide into hot air balloons they would not fly. True, but clearly not the point.
■ Converting negative but vocal individuals
Negative staff can be very damaging to efforts to change behaviour. We have taken to
phoning them up to deal with their comments rather than getting trapped in e-mail
debates. They usually either back down when challenged or become an avid supporter.
■ Refer challenges
We now ask some of those formally negative but vocal individuals to champion change
locally when we next communicate. It makes them feel involved and useful as well as
helping us to prepare for the type of questioning we may face.

■ settlers – they care about security (financial and psychological ) and their family.
They are more likely to be risk adverse and to be wedded to routine. They are likely
to be process-driven in their job. This means they may react better if they have targets
to meet.
Staff in the Environment Agency are likely to broadly represent society as a whole as we
have a large geographical range, a diverse workforce and varying age ranges.
Our ability to act is affected by the job we do but also the attitude of the organisation.
Some staff have more of a role to play because they work in a job that can directly affect
our performance, such as procurement staff who can influence contracts, facilities staff
who manage our buildings and assets, or operations delivery staff who work out in
environmentally sensitive locations.
Generally, though, our staff cannot act if they do not have clear messages right from the
top of the organisation through to their line managers to tell them that environmental
management has to be part of everyone’s decision making. This isn’t easy and we have not
fully achieved this yet. The fact that our internal environment strategy is one of only ten
sub strategies of the Environment Agency’s corporate plan shows our commitment so we
use it as a lever to get more attention. Our performance and any action needed is
discussed at the highest level with directors and the Board. To varying degrees its success is
fed down through management teams to try to reinforce the message that all of our staff
are ambassadors for the environment. We expect our managers to support our staff where
they pose questions or make challenges that involve our environmental impact and we
want our staff to feel that they have the ‘authority’ to make such a challenge.
The Environment Agency is in an unusual situation when you consider that many of our
staff are experts in the environmental field. This hugely complicates our attempts to
change behaviour because they often present us with well rounded opposing views.
We have had to be creative to move certain things forward.
What follows is the ten ways in which we have sought to change our staff’s behaviour.
Example – offering a choice of operational vehicle
The above are two of four stickers which have been produced to stick to the windscreen
of our operational vehicles. We have a range of vehicles, including light transit vans and
4x4’s. The stickers allow our operational staff to make an informed choice of vehicle
when they leave the depot each morning, only choosing a 4x4 (which is normally the
most polluting) if they need to go off road.
24 Going Green:
1) Positive messaging and ‘nudging’
Sometimes it feels easier to train a dog to do something rather than a human because we are so
complex. Positive messaging is essential as it is not threatening and does not rear up our defiant
heads. When talking to a child about not running onto the road, you will have more success if
you say ‘stay on the pavement as it is safer’ rather than ‘don’t run into the road because you
may get hurt’. The same principle applies for all communications. With lighting, you would
use ‘please turn the lights off because it saves energy’ rather than ‘don’t leave lights on’.
A ‘nudge’ is where you offer no neutral choice in order to influence people’s behaviour.
You are still giving people a choice but it is an informed one.
2) Getting senior directors involved
There is no doubt that it is helpful for senior management and directors to lead from the
top with a commitment to improve environmental performance. However, it is more
effective if staff see these directors and managers visibly getting involved and demonstrating
how it is done. This could range from directors simply using the train rather than making a
journey as a single occupant in a car or by turning off the lights and monitors in their office
when away from the desk and walking around to ask others to do the same.
Example – Sorting rubbish

This picture shows some of our
directors after a ‘bin dig’ at our
Head Office. At lunchtime, the
directors donned rubber gloves
and sorted through the waste in
front of staff, showing what
should and shouldn’t have
been in the various bags. It was
interesting for the directors, if a
little smelly, and staff got to see
the directors in a new, slightly
pungent, way.
3) Make it part of normal business reporting and build it into your training and human
resource (HR) processes
For staff to begin embedding environment management into the way they work it is
important to show it incorporated across the business. Our internal environment
management targets are part of the corporate business reporting process rather than an
‘add-on’.
We have also included internal environment management into the staff induction process.
The electronic induction learning package details what our staff need to do to manage our
environment footprint. The induction day includes a success story where one of our staff
talks to the new starters about their job and how they work sustainably. Feedback from this
has been particular good as new starters see real people in everyday jobs not someone from
Head Office telling them to take the environment seriously.

Example – Individual performance objectives
All project
managers within
our construction
function have an
objective within
their individual
performance
plans to ensure
that they use our
carbon calculator
during the design
and construction
of all new flood
risk management
schemes.
The calculator allows choices to be made on the embodied carbon dioxide emissions of
materials, their transportation, site energy use and waste management.
Internal environment management is first on the agenda at our managers’ four-day

training course, demonstrating clearly to managers how important it is to our organisation
and their role as a manager.
Our HR policies and processes have also been amended to reflect what we expect from our
staff. We have developed some generic environment management behaviours for use in our
staff’s performance plans so that managers can set targets specifically relating to sustainability.
4) Buying kit
It is obvious that any organisation is limited in how much it can reduce its environment
impact if it relies on staff behaviour change only. What may surprise you is that by buying
kit you can indirectly change behaviour so it is worth the visit to the finance director with a
convincing case.
We have chosen not to offset our carbon dioxide emissions through an external offsetting
scheme. Instead every year we invest the money in ourselves through our Carbon
Reduction Fund which provides money to projects which have good carbon dioxide savings
per pound spent, encourage new technology and engage our staff. The ideas come from
our staff on the ground who know the systems they work to and the opportunities available.
One project involved using the tide changes from a feeder river and pumping at different
times of day so that less overall pumping was required on a particular river. Another
involved the construction of a visitor centre at a lock site which reused tyres as foundations,
and used straw bales to construct the walls and photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into
electricity.
26 Going Green:
Some ‘kit’ ideas
■ Voltage optimisation – we have introduced this technology at suitable sites and are
achieving an average 10 per cent saving in electricity use per site with financial
payback between five to six years. Average voltage supplied from the national grid is
around 260v. Most electrical equipment manufactured for Europe and the UK can
run effectively at lower supply voltages (220v). Voltage optimisation reduces and
smooths our supply voltage to improve the performance and lifespan of our
equipment, which enables us to save energy.
■ Bring in a sparky – a local electrician will have the technical knowledge to tell you
what you can improve on a site. Environment consultants can be expensive and will
usually give general ideas that will still require an electrician’s visit to see if it is
feasible for the site. A local electrician will show on-site staff that you are committed
to trying to improve the sites energy performance and support local business.
■ Fewer, and automatic lights – many of our offices have intelligent lighting systems
which are controlled by movement or light sensors. This helps to ensure that lights
turn on only when needed.
■ Rainwater harvesting – several of our sites have rainwater harvesting systems and
reduce their mains water consumption by 30–40 per cent.
Example – Wind turbines

At a depot we installed a small wind turbine to help power the site operations and also to
export electricity to the grid when the depot wasn’t using it. It is a bold piece of kit that
can’t be missed by
our staff. Before
and after the
turbine was
installed, there
was a check made
on the number of
computer
monitors left on.
After the turbine
was installed the
number of
monitors left on
decreased
substantially.
There were no other obvious factors to affect the change so the visual presence of the
turbine would appear to have caused the change in the behaviour.
5) ‘Star charts’
Improving performance through recognising good behaviour is an age-old trick with
children, who tend to thrive on seeing stars added to a chart. In the workplace we also
respond to good feedback. Showing performance as a comparison allows progress to be

seen at a glance, instills a degree of competitiveness and prompts the sharing of good
practice. We praise the better performers rather than drawing attention to the poor
performers. There is little doubt that the poor performers will be silently taking note to
take action to try and improve on their performance.
The chart below shows how we did this for our business mileage target last year.
We provide information on individual performance so that line managers can do their jobs
effectively. For example, we publicise the top 100 highest mileage lease and casual (staff’s
own vehicle used on business) car drivers on a quarterly basis. We have a policy that
restricts the number of miles that can be driven in a casual vehicle as on average these
vehicles are older and more polluting.
6) Find the more vocal staff members

Staff who are vocal and listened to by colleagues make very good champions at a local level.
Involving them can really make a difference – they can publicise performance for their
team to see, and they can challenge established work practices because they understand
the way it works.
7) Inclusive green groups and an Idea scheme

Encouraging staff to develop their own ideas and take action is important to change their
behaviour but also to prompt changes in other peoples behaviour.
We have a ‘Your Idea’ scheme where our staff are encouraged to submit ideas for how we
can become more efficient as an organisation. On average, a third of all these ideas relate
to sustainability. We respond to every single one and provide feedback to the author. Some
successful ideas that have been implemented are:
■ taking the bulbs out of wall lights at our London Head office as they were consuming
electricity for a decorative purpose only;
■ enabling employees to use the London Cycle Hire scheme when travelling on
business in the capital.
28 Going Green:
Local green groups are encouraged and supported. The following screen shot shows the
start of one newsletter produced by a particular area in the east of England. Recognition is
important to staff who give up their time to work on these groups. The more recognition,
the more the group appears to grow and the more successful it seems to be at changing
local behaviour.
8) Limit or remove their choices

In certain instances the best way to improve environment performance is to limit or
remove the choice as some of our staff will not do what we want for various reasons. Our
lease car policy is an example of this. Eligible staff now have a very limited list from which
to choose a car. The list is changed quarterly and when it is compiled, health and safety,
environmental and finance criteria are used. When staff choose a car they are thinking
about many factors, including personal ones.
Another example is the removal of bins from under desks. If a bin is there, people tend to
use it because of its convenience rather than taking the waste to the dedicated recycling or
landfill bins.
9) Constant badgering – relentless but consistent

Regular, ongoing communications show our commitment and the drip, drip way of
changing behaviour can work because it reinforces the messages. Think about who you
Example – footers on e-mails
P Here at the Environment Agency we have reduced our average water use to
18 litres per person per day. This compares to a UK office average of 30 litres per
day. Please support our water reduction initiatives.
Every month we send out a footer that can put at the end of e-mails. It is communicated by the
Head of Internal Environment Management to a large network of staff, who in turn forward
it on. We end up with a lot of staff using the footer and suggesting ideas for the next one.

want to influence because pop ups and screen savers for our laptops and computers may
work for office based staff but remote staff who drive out of the depot to work each day
may need a message on their steering wheel every few months.
During our themed quarters we engage staff with quizzes and local events. We give
environmentally friendly prizes and bring in senior managers locally to promote the local
events. We also include messages on payslips.
10) Publicity
There can be a big impact on how staff behave through external recognition or publicity.
We have found more general enthusiasm about environmental change from our staff.
People want to be proud of the company they work for.
Our award from the Sunday Times has shown our staff that we are as good as many large
companies out there that spend a great deal of time on marketing their environmental
plans. A Guardian article on our national wind turbine project also prompted much
internal interest along with sustained publicity on our new head office in Bristol. The new
office has achieved one of the highest scores ever awarded under BREEAM (BRE
Environmental Assessment Method).
…and finally, make it fun!

Changing staff behaviour to achieve what you want is not easy and does take time and
effort. It is important to start somewhere, help others understand your priorities but keep
it manageable and acknowledge that you can’t do everything in one go. Prioritising five
things to do well is sensible, and when you have done them, come up with the next five.
We have made good progress at improving our environmental performance and protecting
the environment from our own activities but it could not have been done without the
commitment of our staff. Our staff are our greatest asset and responsible for both what we
have achieved to date and what we can achieve in the future.
30 Going Green:
Green buildings:
Understanding the role of end user behaviour
Mindy Hadi and Chloe Halfhide, BRE
With the advent of new technologies, driven by the move to low carbon design, buildings
are becoming increasingly complex to operate both for the facilities professional and the
end user. Designers of buildings, systems and controls are not always aware of the impact of
their decisions on the occupant and do not always take account of the principles of user-
centred design. The findings of this research show that if users are uncomfortable they will
adapt the building to meet their needs, even if this increases energy wastage and
compromises safety.
Buildings are responsible for about 40 per cent of the UK’s energy consumption (Perez-
Lombard et al., 2008) although until recently energy saving was not high on the list of
priorities for an occupying organisation, as energy costs represented a very small
percentage of a company’s total costs compared to labour and other operating costs.
However, this position has changed substantially in recent years: concerns about the impact
of climate change and continuity of energy supplies are no longer the preserve of a few
lone voices but becoming mainstream. New Government regulations and a drive to reduce
energy bills and carbon emissions have meant that new buildings are being designed to be
as energy efficient as possible; many use advanced, innovative systems to heat, cool and
light the building. These include features such as movement-activated sensor lighting,
water efficient appliances, automatic opening windows, etc. However, it has frequently
been found, by BRE researchers and others, that these new buildings are not meeting their
design targets for energy and water use.
Recognising the role of occupant behaviour

It is thought that one of the main reasons for this discrepancy is that the role of the end
user is often underestimated in building and systems design. Bordass and Leaman (1997)
found that designers and their clients often appeared to underestimate or ignore how
systems (physical and human) can conflict with each other and that occupant behaviour is
often stereotyped or ignored.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development report (2007) recognised the
role of occupant behaviour as having ‘as much impact on energy consumption as the
efficiency of equipment’, yet little research has been carried out specifically on these
behaviours or on potential interventions that address their negative impact on energy
conservation.
Researchers trying to model or simulate how occupants use energy dependent systems in
buildings have recognised the difficulty of this task, due to the variations in actual user
behaviour outside the laboratory context (Robinson, 1997). Nicol (2001) points out that
this simulation requires assumptions to be made about the behaviour of occupants and, in

particular, their use of building controls Multi-function,
(such as windows, blinds, heaters or counter-intuitive,
fans) but that these assumptions are complex switches
often not based on actual, observed incorporating features
behaviour but on the basis of best such as dimming or
practice or in an experimental way to scene lighting with
test the effect of different behaviour the on/off function
patterns. that even experienced
users did not
Post occupancy studies understand how to
operate.
One way of addressing this lack of
evidence is through the use of post
occupancy evaluation (POE), the process of obtaining feedback on new or recently completed
buildings. Although its value has been recognised since the 1960s, there is still little evidence
of this being carried out in a consistent way, and certainly not routinely on all major
construction or refurbishment projects (Cooper, 2001). POE provides a check on building
performance in use from a technical, social, functional and economic perspective and
also monitors the understanding and behaviour of occupants, enabling lessons to be learned
that can be taken into account to improve design and implementation on future projects.
BRE has been carrying out POEs for a number of years and has found that, despite the
advent of new technologies and building control systems, complaints by occupants about
thermal comfort, ventilation, noise, and lighting are still endemic, even in buildings
designed with sustainability in mind. Many researchers have suggested that by removing all
occupant control and relying solely on computer technology to govern the building
conditions, it would be possible to provide an environment that would be optimised for
user comfort and energy consumption (Sharples et al., 1999). However, the evidence
indicates that occupants have a preference for buildings where they have some element of
control over the environment, even if this does not provide optimal conditions (Leaman &
Bordass, 2001).
In spite of this evidence, many modern working buildings are not designed to provide
much occupant control – there is also little opportunity in a typical open plan office to
allow for individual differences or choice of setting. Occupants will therefore look for ways
of making themselves comfortable by adapting their workplace to their needs, even if this
means ‘sabotaging’ automated systems – researchers have noted automatic windows
propped open by books, makeshift movement devices to override automatic lighting
systems and cold water placed under thermostats to increase the room temperature.
Large banks of switches with no labels or

‘mapping’ to indicate which light each switch
controlled, with the result that all the lights in a
large, open-plan office were switched on, even if
there was only one occupant. One enterprising
facilities manager had taken the trouble to address
this issue by attaching his own labels
32 Going Green:
BRE research
Recognising a need to examine actual occupant behaviours that impact on the energy
efficiency of buildings and to provide guidance for designers to take these into account,
the BRE Trust funded a research project involving a systematic investigation of eight
buildings from a variety of sectors and regions over a 12-month period in 2008-9. The
buildings were selected based on their energy-efficient and sustainable design. The case
studies investigated the ways in which occupants actually used their buildings, whether they
were used as they were designed to be, and the reasons for any discrepancies. Each case
study visit comprised interviews with the architect, building services engineer and facilities
manager of each building as well as focus groups with occupants and an observational
walk-through.
Summary of findings
The research team found that, as hypothesised, building occupants were adapting their
workplaces to meet their own needs, and exhibiting behaviours that increased energy
usage, compromising the original design intent for a low energy building. However, these
behaviours were often inadvertent, resulting from a lack of understanding of the systems
installed, poor communication to occupants about how to use the systems and, most of all,
a lack of consideration of the principles of user-centred design in the design of
environmental systems and controls. These principles, such as feedback, mapping,
affordances, intuitive controls, etc., as advocated by researchers such as Norman (1988) are
not new and, although they have been discussed by psychologists and ergonomists for
many years, they appear to have fallen out of use.
This was particularly apparent with reference to the design of lighting controls – all the
buildings visited had been designed with energy efficient lighting; however, in the majority
of cases occupants had experienced difficulties in controlling the lighting with the result
that lights would be left on unnecessarily. Issues noted included multi-function controls
which were often counter-intuitive or contained a number of complex switches
incorporating various functions such as dimming with others such as the on/off function
or scene lightings (see first picture). It was noted that even experienced users did not
understand how to operate some such switches. Also large banks of switches without labels
can be a problem. These sometimes have no labels indicating which light each switch
controlled. Occupants may have to use trial-and-error and this can even result in all lights
in an open-plan office being switched on, even if there was only a single occupant! The
second picture illustrates how one enterprising facilities manager got around the problem
by attaching his own labels, while the third picture, below, shows how even simple switches
can be improved by providing feedback about whether they are in the on or off position.
As mentioned above, a recurring theme throughout the project was the lack of simple
information for occupants explaining how to control their environment when new
technologies and systems are installed, again increasing energy usage. Designers as
technical experts tend to forget that the end users of their technologies are not – examples
included occupants using an energy -intensive mechanical ventilation system rather than
using the high level opening windows which formed the natural ventilation strategy; or

bringing in energy wasteful back-up Rocker switches that
heating and cooling devices (fans, did not provide
heaters, etc.) that worked against the feedback as to
building’s systems. whether they were in
the ‘on’ or ‘off’ state.
Conclusions
With the advent of new technologies
workplace buildings are becoming
increasingly complex to operate but
designers of buildings, systems and
controls are often unaware of the
impact of their decisions on the ordinary
occupant. If buildings users are uncomfortable they will take control of their environment
and adapt it to suit them, even if this may be wasteful or even dangerous. Part of the
problem is that design tends to be viewed as a discrete activity with pressures on time and
budgets constraining consideration of user- centred design but without this, we will still be
building energy efficient buildings that do not deliver. Some key recommendations for
designers from the research include:
■ Keep the design simple. Automation is not always the answer.
■ Give occupants some element of control – otherwise they will take it anyway.
■ Ensure adequate and appropriate training and information for all building
occupants. It is important that occupants understand not just how to control the
building but why they are being asked to control it in a specific way that may be
counter-intuitive.
■ Carry out regular post occupancy evaluation (POE) assessments with particular
emphasis on end user behaviour to check building performance in use.
The detailed findings of the research are reported in Hadi and Halfhide (2009), which
provides targeted recommendations for designers, facilities managers and building users,
showing how negative behaviours can be avoided and their impact reduced.
34 Going Green:
References
Bordass, W. & Leaman, A. (1997). Design for manageability. Building Research and
Information, 25(3).
Cooper, I. (2001). Post-occupancy evaluation – where are you? Building Research &
Information, 29(2), 58–163.
Hadi, M. & Halfhide, C. (2009). The move to low carbon design: Are designers taking the needs of
building users into account? A guide for building designers, operators and users. Bracknell:
IHS BRE Press.
Perez-Lombard, L., Ortiz, O. & Pout, C. (2008). A review on buildings’ energy
consumption. Energy & Buildings, 40, 394–398.
Leaman, A. & Bordass, W. (2001). Assessing building performance in use 4: the Probe
occupant surveys and their implications. Building Research & Information, 29(2),
129–143
Nicol, J.F. (2001). Characterising occupant behaviour in buildings: Towards a stochastic
model of occupant use of windows, lights, blinds, heaters and fans. Proceedings of the
7th International IBPSA Conference, 2001.
Norman, D. (1988). The psychology of everyday things. Basic Books.
Robinson, D. (1997). Occupancy related data for use in energy and environmental
Modelling. BRE report CR 102/97.
Sharples, S., Callaghan, V. & Clarke, G. (1999). A multi-agent architecture for intelligent
building sensing and control. International Sensor Review Journal, 19(2), 13–14.
WBCSD. (2007). Energy efficiency in buildings: Business realities and opportunities: Summary
report. World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Green organisational performance: Behavioural change
interventions based on the theory of planned behaviour
Richard Parker, Boots Opticians
Measuring organisational performance has always been a difficult task, and one that
occupational psychologists have been inherently interested in as they endeavour to
improve this performance through psychological means. But in order to assess the merit of
a particular strategy, we need to be able to measure ‘high’ performance. This also allows us
to look at ‘high performing’ organisations more closely to emulate their success (Hubbard,
2009). A vast array of key performance indicators (KPIs) have, in the past, been indicators
of a more general ‘bottom line’ measurement which have sought to illustrate economic
performance. More recently, measures of environmental and social performance have
been included to determine organisational performance as a whole, popularly termed a
Triple Bottom Line (TBL) (Elkington, 1997). Hubbard (2009) defines each aspect of the
TBL as follows: economic performance is straight forward and encompasses purely
financial aspects of the company, such as sales and profit growth; social performance is the
impact an organisation has on the communities in which it is based and also those working
for the company; and environmental performance generally refers to the amount of
resources used by organisations (energy, water, land), as well as the by-products of its
activities (waste, air emissions, chemical residues).
Why do businesses need to measure environmental performance?

The call for non-financial measures of performance arises from stakeholders expectations
about the social and environmental responsibilities of the companies in which they invest.
As reported in The Economist, even as long ago as 2004 almost 75 per cent of large
international companies were under pressure to report on more than just their economic
performance, describing existing measures as mediocre or poor. A number of financial
markets reflect this change in opinion; The Dow Jones sustainability Global World Index
was developed so that investors could make socially responsible investments and
sustainability reporting has been made compulsory in the Paris and Johannesburg stock
exchanges and for the top 200 organisations listed in the UK (Kleiner, 2007).
It is hard to argue that environmental issues aren’t a major topic within the media and
science at the moment. Davis and Challenger (2009, p.112) explain how ‘Climate change is
generally accepted as the biggest single issue facing humankind in the 21st century’. The
IPCC (2007) predicts temperature rises of at least 2°C (probably more) which is likely to
cause dramatic weather changes; less rain and intense heatwaves will cause droughts and
fires, intense storms will cause floods, which together with rising sea levels will put coastal
cities and even entire islands at risk. These weather changes will also cause drastic
problems for its inhabitants (both humans and animals), as diseases will spread more
quickly, crops will be more difficult to grow, leading to starvation and wars over
diminishing resources, extreme temperatures will lead to mass mortality, and animal
36 Going Green:
species will be hit and even may become extinct (Walker & King, 2008). Some of these
effects can already been seen in the poorest parts of the world and it is widely agreed that
we have less than 15 years to act on our greenhouse gas emissions to stop dangerous
impacts (Spence, Pidgeon & Uzzel, 2009; Walker & King, 2008).
DEFRA (2008) have identified 12 key behaviours that will help to combat climate change
within the areas of personal transport (e.g. use more efficient vehicles and avoid
unnecessary flights), energy, waste and water in our homes (e.g. insulation, recycling and
more responsible water usage), and eco-products (e.g. eat more locally produced, seasonal
food). However, just listing behaviours does not lead to behaviour change, and further to
this, favourable attitudes toward a behaviour is not enough for that behaviour to be carried
out (Ajzen, 2001). In addition, changing behaviours at home may not be the best way to
combat climate change, as according to recent government studies by the DTI (2006) and
DEFRA (2006), the non-domestic sector (e.g. services, public sector and industry) has a
significantly higher impact on climate change than residential sectors. In fact, the UK’s
service and industry sectors contribute twice the amount of carbon (MtC) to the
atmosphere (DTI, 2006) and industry and commerce almost three times the amount of
annual waste (DEFRA, 2006).
Who already records environmental performance?

A report by The Climate Group (2007) shows that some companies are already taking
responsibility for their actions. The report details case studies from 84 corporations, 36
cities and 17 regional governments, who were collectively responsible for 3.5 billion tonnes
of CO2e (equivalent) emissions – nearly 8 per cent of the global total. These organisations
managed to reduce their emissions by over 497 million tones CO2e, an average cut of 14
per cent, although some managed cuts of over 70 per cent. A report by Nature (Kleiner,
2007) also detailed how other business have been taking an interest in their environmental
performance as Google announced it would be carbon neutral by the end of 2008 and
Rupert Murdoch made a similar pledge with regards to his media empire. Other examples
given to support this awareness were investments made by Richard Branson for the Virgin
group, which pledged to invest $3 billion to develop low-carbon fuels, BP promised $350
billion to reduce its internal emissions and $8 billion into alternative energies, and a
number of business coalitions have been set up calling for governments to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions, one surprisingly even headed by General Motors.
Hard-headed business decisions or social responsibility?

Some have argued that these changes have more to do with ‘hard-headed business
decisions than social responsibility’ (Kleiner, 2007, p.40) as executives try to remain one
step ahead, envisaging government-imposed caps and emissions taxes not to be far away. In
fact, the European Union has already imposed a cap and trade system for major emitters,
which it plans to extend further and place more stringent caps than the ones already in
place (Kleiner, 2007). Whether it is actually an increase in social responsibility or not, the
business gains speak for themselves as the climate report mentioned previously, which
detailed such immense emissions savings, also described immense financial savings as the
53 cities and regions reported $64 billion worth of savings. The report also explained how

it wasn’t only direct financial gains seen by the organisations that were ‘being green’, as
indirectly they would gain a better reputation and an increased brand value. Further
examples of this have come from Marks and Spencer and BP who have even used green
positioning as a strategic marketing device (Jackson, 2005). So, whether it’s a social
responsibility, a cost cutting exercise, a marketing ploy or trying to remain one step ahead
of legislation, the pressure is mounting on business to be aware of its environmental
performance and the field of occupational psychology is very well-placed to shed new light
on how organisations can deal with such change.
Where are we now?

While occupational psychologists as a rule concern themselves with the social performance
of an organisation, they do so only indirectly with respect to the economic performance of
an organisation. Until recently, however, there has been relatively limited attention given
to environmental performance. As organisations are now coming under pressure to focus
on their environmental performance, it would seem that the insights that psychology has
to offer into workplace behaviour can be usefully harnessed in the pursuit of greening an
organisation. As Davis and Challenger (2009) explain, psychologists are already
successfully changing behaviour in many areas and by ‘reframing the green issue as a more
traditional organisational problem, just as any other in the workplace’ (p.113) there is no
reason not to triumph with green issues also. Despite this, they warn of a lack of research
undertaken in the areas of environmental impact at work and urge for more to be done in
this area – from the 8,595 articles returned from their multiple database search the vast
majority looked at green behaviours in the home while the workplace was almost entirely
overlooked. A well-established theory of individual behaviour upon which many successful
interventions to bring about waste reduction in a residential setting have been based is the
theory of planned behaviour and in the remainder of this paper I outline how it can be
applied to green initiatives in a workplace setting.
The theory of planned behaviour

The theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) takes a cognitive approach to predicting
behaviour, assuming that decisions about behaviour are rational and are determined by a
logical sequence of cognitions. The theory of planned behaviour is an extension of the
theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) that came in
response to calls to abandon the attitude concept as a means to predict behaviour due to
its unimpressive predictive power (Wicker, 1969).
The theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour stipulate that behaviour is
driven by an individual’s intentions to perform that behaviour and in turn, intentions are
driven by a person’s attitude toward the behaviour. Attitudes by themselves don’t always act
as significant predictors of behaviour and so the theory of reasoned action also includes
subjective norms, as well as attitudes in predicting intentions. The theory of planned
behaviour took this a step further still and added the notion of ‘perceived behavioural
control’, as represented in Figure 1.
38 Going Green:
Figure 1: Pictorial representation of the Theory of Planned Behaviour
Behavioural
Behavioural At
Attitude
titude
Toward the
Toward the
Beliefs
Beliefs
Behaviour
Behaviour
Normative
Normative Subjective
Subjective
Intention Behaviour
Behaviour
Beliefs
Beliefs Norms
N orms
Control
Control Perceived
Perceived
Beliefs
Beliefs Behavioural
Behavioural
C
Control
ontrol
Attitudes are defined as beliefs about the predicted outcomes of a behaviour and the
evaluations of the pleasantness of each of these outcomes. For example, someone could
consider looking good to be a positive outcome of keeping fit and they may rate that
benefit moderately. However, they could also see the aches and pains from keeping fit as a
negative outcome and rate that cost highly, which overall would lead to an unfavourable
behavioural belief and hence an unfavourable attitude to keeping fit.
Subjective norms are defined as beliefs about whether others would want to perform the
behaviour in question weighted by the motivation to comply with that person. Adding to
the previous example, the person in question could have a neighbour that likes to keep fit
but their motivation to comply with their neighbour may be low. On the other hand, their
brother may not keep fit and if the person is closer to their brother they may have a
stronger desire to comply with him.
The theory of reasoned action didn’t include a measure of perceived behavioural control
as it assumed that behaviour was under volitional control, i.e. that someone could perform
the behaviour if they wished. However, as shown on many occasions in psychological
research there are often personal and environmental barriers. Perceived behavioural
control is an individual’s perception of their ability to perform the behaviour in question
and hence the constraints they perceive in doing so. It is caused by beliefs concerning
whether resources and opportunities are available to perform the behaviour in question
and what the expected impact is of each of these factors. In this case the person in the
example may have no gym nearby and perceive this as an important factor in being able to
keep fit.
It is thought that the more favourable a person’s attitude, subjective norm and perceived
behavioural control, the stronger intentions they will have and hence a higher probability
that they will carry out the behaviour in question. However, as Ajzen (1991) points out, the
‘relative importance of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control in
the prediction of intentions is expected to vary across behaviour and situation’ (p.188).
Hypothetically this means that if attitudes and subjective norms are strong, perceived

behavioural control may be less of a predictor of intentions. Additionally, as well as
influencing intentions, under certain circumstances perceived behavioural control is also
thought to influence behaviour directly. This direct relationship arises because, no matter
how strong ones intentions are, personal and environmental barriers will also be able to
affect behaviour and ‘the addition of perceived behavioural control over behaviour should
become increasingly useful as volitional control over behaviour decreases’ (Ajzen, 1991,
p.185). All this means that under complete volitional control, the framework laid down by
the theory of reasoned action, whereby attitudes and subjective norms influence intentions
which in turn influence behaviours, will be optimal. However, when behaviour is not under
complete volitional control, perceived behavioural control will act as a moderator between
intentions and behaviour, as well as guiding behaviour directly.
Effectiveness of the theory of planned behaviour

Past meta-analyses have examined the constructs of the theory of planned behaviour using
multiple regression analysis, a statistical tool that calculates what variance (R2) of a
measure, in this case intentions or behaviour, are explained by predictor variables; attitude,
subjective norm and perceived behavioural control for intentions, and perceived
behavioural control and intentions for behaviours. Ajzen’s (1991) initial review found that
the theory of planned behaviour variables accounted for between 18 per cent (r = 0.43) to
88 per cent (r = 0.94) of the variance of intentions, with an average of 50 per cent
(r =0.71). Armitage and Conner’s (2001) meta-analysis of 154 studies concluded that 39
per cent (r = 0.62) of variance in intentions could be explained by the same variables, and
Perugini and Bagozzi (2004) found even less variance accounted for, at only 32 per cent
(see Table 1).
Authors Year Explained Variance
Ajzen 1991 50% (average)
Armitage & Conner 2001 39%
Perugini & Bagozzi 2004 32%
Table 1: Summary of results from studies showing variance in Intentions

explained by Theory of Planned Behaviour variables
Similarly, Ajzen found between 4 per cent (r = 0.20) and 61 per cent (r = 0.78) of variance
in behaviours was explained by intentions, with the average at 26 per cent (r = 0.51),
whereas Armitage and Conner found 22 per cent of the variance was accounted for. Other
studies concluded that the figure was around 20 per cent (Randall & Wolff, 1994), with
Sheeran and Orbell (1998) reporting a similar figure of 19 per cent; however, this did not
include perceived behavioural control, which can act directly on behaviours and which,
when included, increases the amount of variance explained to 27 per cent (Armitage &
Conner, 2001). These results are summarised in Table 2.
40 Going Green:
Authors Year Explained Variance
Ajzen 1991 26% (average)
Armitage & Conner 2001 22%
Sheeran & Orbell 1998 19%
Randall & Wolff 1994 20%
Armitage & Conner

2001 27%
(intentions & PBC)
Table 2: Summary of results from studies showing

Variance of Behaviours explained by Intentions
Social norms in the theory of planned behaviour

Despite the strong theoretical basis for a normative construct, studies have also shown it to
have a weak relationship with behaviour (Armitage & Conner, 2001). Ajzen has explained
this result in terms of cultural differences as Western cultures tend to be more
individualistic and so rely more on moral obligations rather than the opinions of others.
Arnold et al. (2005) believe this individualism instead means that people in Western
cultures are more inclined to think they are not influenced by others opinions, even
though they are. An alternative argument put forward by Armitage and Conner, on the
other hand, suggests that the reason could lay in the strength of the measures. This
opinion is supported by the idea that the way people identify with the groups from which
the norms are derived is important, as the norms of a ‘behaviourally relevant reference
group’ (Armitage & Conner, 2001; p.225) are more likely to influence intentions (Terry,
Hogg & White, 1999).
The theory of planned behaviour in recycling research

There have been a number of studies examining the theory of planned behaviour in the
context of recycling behaviour. For example, Tonglet, Phillips and Read (2004) found in a
study of 191 participants that attitudes were the only significant predictor of recycling
behaviour when a local kerbside recycling scheme was introduced, accounting for 26 per
cent of the variance in intentions. A similar study by Knussen et al. (2004) found the
theory of planned behaviour variables predicted an additional 29 per cent of intentions
after demographic factors were found to predict 5 per cent when entered at the first step
of the regression analysis. In this study, attitudes and perceived behavioural control made
significant contributions and again subjective norm did not.
The theory of planned behaviour in the workplace

The use of the theory of planned behaviour in the workplace is rather more sparse,
especially in relation to the investigation of environmental behaviours. A number of other
issues have, however, been studied. Hill, Mann and Wearing (1996), for example, used the

theory of planned behaviour to investigate benchmarking intentions among managers with
experience of benchmarking and those with none. They found the determinant variables
accounted for 57 per cent and found attitudes and subjective norms to be significant, but
not self efficacy (a measure previously used for perceived behavioural control). Relocation
decisions and intentions were investigated by Prehar (2001), who employed qualitative
methods (i.e. content analysis) and used the theory of reasoned actions as a framework.
Evidence was found to support the theory of reasoned action variables influencing
relocation decisions and intentions. However, social inputs seemed to have more impact on
behaviours than intentions. Because of this Prehar also questioned the effectiveness of the
subjective norm measure. Similarly, Peach, Jimmieson and White (2005) investigated local
government employees’ intentions to carry out behaviour that supported building
relocations, because employee support is important for organisational change. Again,
results supported the use of the theory of planned behaviour in a workplace setting,
however only one of the six measures used for perceived behavioural control was
significant, casting doubt on the usefulness of the measure as a whole. Peach et al. (2005)
were particularly interested in ‘the significant result found for normative beliefs’ as they
believed it suggested ‘social influence may help to create social pressure among employees
to act in change-supportive ways’ (p.18). Elliott, Jobber and Sharp (1995) found that the
theory of planned behaviour variables explained 74 per cent of variance in intentions
when investigating intentions to commission marketing research. This result was much
larger than the previous meta-analysis and reviews discussed and in fact all the studies of
theory of planned behaviour in the workplace showed a greater proportion of variance
than the previous studies that have been mentioned. Elliot put this down to more cognitive
thought when dealing with problems at work and as the theory of planned behaviour takes
a cognitive approach it seems to have a particularly strong predictive power when applied
in the workplace. Furthermore, it could also be an indication of the greater complexity
when examining the behaviour of individuals in an organisational setting as it could be
argued that they are more constrained by social and organisational factors than behaviour
outside of the workplace, all of which suggests that there could be considerable benefit in
applying it to the study of pro-environmental behaviour at work. Hence the research
reported below does just that.
The theory of planned behaviour in predicting recycling behaviour

in the workplace
The research reported below aimed to look at the theory of planned behaviour in a
workplace setting and in particular the effectiveness of the theory of planned behaviour
variables in significantly predicting recycling behaviour in the workplace. As discussed
above the subjective norm measure has proved to be unreliable and so the present
research framed the normative questions within a workplace setting, for example ‘people
at work think that I should recycle’. The customary questions, such as ‘most of my friends
think that recycling is a good thing to do’, were also included so that it could be
investigated what additional value the reframing would add. A brief overview of the results
of the current research is given here, but more in-depth analyses are available from the
author (see Parker, forthcoming).
42 Going Green:
Consistent with the increased proportion of explained variance of behaviours and
intentions within a work place setting the research carried out showed that 48 per cent of
the behavioural intentions were explained by the theory of planned behaviour variables
(perceived behavioural control and subjective norms were significant; however, attitudes
were not). This result showed greater explained variance than previous meta-analysed
(Armitage & Conner, 2001; Perugini & Bagozzi, 2004), although not than Ajzen’s (1991)
initial review. However, the variance of behaviours explained by intentions and perceived
behavioural control was 58 per cent, which was significantly greater than all the previous
meta-analysis and reviews (Ajzen, 1991; Armitage & Conner, 2001; Sheeran & Orbell, 1998;
Randall & Wolff, 1994). Furthermore, this study found that by reframing the social norm
questions to look at work norms, this significantly added 20 per cent extra to the
explanation of the variance in intentions supporting the importance of social influence
within organisations.
These results strengthen the idea that the theory of planned behaviour has greater
relevancy within a workplace setting. This could be because colleagues are acting more
mindfully at work and are not ‘on automatic’ as they may be at home. Or there could be a
greater need to comply with rules and regulations at work than outside of work and
therefore people are more likely to act on their normative beliefs, i.e. doing as their peers
do or doing as superiors say, rather than what they want to do. Hence this may explain why
attitudes failed to correlate with intentions but subjective norms did. Furthermore, it seems
that if you intend to do something at work and believe you have the necessary skills and
tools to carry it out, you are more likely to carry this intention through to action. This
again could be down to the social and organisational pressures, but also the greater
importance of control an individual perceives that they have. This is consistent with the
literature on organisational change (see Senior & Swailes, 2010) – if an employee feels they
have little control over a situation they are less likely to carry out that behaviour.
With these results in mind there are certain steps an organisation may want to take if
introducing (or reintroducing) recycling or other pro-environmental behaviours into the
workplace. First of all changing attitudes is only the first step and does not always correlate
with action, as this research illustrates. However, the majority of other studies and reviews
have found this to be a robust antecedent of intentions (and so behaviour) and it is,
therefore, an important first step. The literature around cognitive behavioural therapy
(e.g. Branch & Willson, 2010) and social marketing (e.g. McKenzie-Mohr & Smith, 2006)
provide just two examples from the wider literature around how to influence attitudes.
However, because changing attitudes alone does as not guarantee subsequent behaviour
change and, given that many attitudes are implicit and therefore difficult things to
influence, it is also important to look at other variables suggested by the theory of planned
behaviour.
Consistent with the finding reported by Peach et al. (2005), that ‘social influence may help
to create social pressure among employees to act in change-supportive ways’ (p.18), the
results from this study indicate that social norms should also be considered when
encouraging pro-environmental behaviours. It can’t be concluded from the present study
what groups different employees will be motivated to comply with and further research is
needed here, but it is likely that this will differ from employee to employee so messages
should be given by a range of different employees (i.e. senior management, middle

management and other colleagues), as well as environmental champions from throughout
the organisation. The same message from a range of employees will ensure that recipients
with different inclinations will be responsive to this idea and this, in turn, can cause a
snowball effect whereby the recipients become the purveyors and motivate other recipients
and so on. In a similar vein, feedback and praise of positive behaviours must also be given
by a range of employees, not just by the immediate line manager, as reinforcement will
differ in strength from employee to employee depending on the person it comes from.
Although it may seem like a difficult task to cascade messages and feedback from several
different sources throughout the organisational hierarchy, the prevalence of modern
technology makes this much easier as the communication doesn’t have to be face to face.
Consider scope exists to engage in novel and creative communications interventions such
as mass video messages and individual feedback via e-mail and newsletters, for example.
Finally, perceived behavioural control can be changed by giving employees control, which,
as this research indicates, would lead to an increase in positive action. This control can be
moderated by external forces, for example by ensuring that recycling or other pro-
environmental schemes are designed with convenience in mind and based on the needs of
the organisation and its members. For example, not having to take recycling to a specific
bin on another floor when they already have numerous other work commitments and
deadlines, or not using a recycling bin that has to be large as it is only going to be collected
once a month as this would discourage people from keeping one in their already crowded
office. Making pro-environmental behaviour as easy as possible for the user and hence
giving them a perception of control is important. Control can also be increased by more of
a sense of internal volition, by involving employees in the implementation of schemes and
giving them the choice of how they want to recycle, for example, or how they want the
message cascaded and how they want feedback and/or rewards. So whether organisations
want to improve their environmental performance because of social responsibility, a cost
cutting exercise, a marketing ploy, or trying to remain one step ahead of legislation, the
utilization of the theory of planned behaviour in the workplace can provide a great deal of
insight into how this can be done by changing attitudes, capitalising on social networks,
and giving people control. This, in turn, is ultimately only going to improve a company’s
triple bottom line.
44 Going Green:
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46 Going Green:
Green behaviour:
Barriers, facilitators and the role of attributions
Richard Plank, City University London
In response to the UK government’s recent emphasis on sustainable development and the

reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. the UK Low Carbon Industrial Strategy; BERR,
2009), a number of large organisations have been undertaking initiatives to ensure
effective carbon management and the prudent long-term use of resources. Initiatives such
as these reflect the increasing recognition of the significance of the non-domestic sector
with regards to climate change and sustainability. This paper reports the findings of a study
of green behaviours by staff from one particular large organisation – a London university.
It employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate sustainable
behaviour within this large organisation. Twenty members of staff were interviewed about
their practices at work in relation to sustainable behaviour. Participants were questioned
about a variety of subjects, from paper recycling to energy use. Attributions (the causes
people attribute to events) were extracted from interview transcripts and coded using the
Leeds Attributional Coding System (LACS; Stratton et al., 1988). Results indicated that
positive behavioural outcomes are associated with Internal, Personal and Controllable
attributions. It is proposed that personal ‘meaningfulness’ within the workforce is resource
that can be tapped into in the pursuit of improved sustainability.
The university featured in this paper has been involved in a number of environmental
initiatives. For example, it joined 14 other UK universities in registering for the Carbon
Trust’s Higher Education Carbon Management (HECM) Programme. It is expected that
this will help the university to react positively to environmental, sustainability and climate
change pressures by establishing carbon management as a core management process. The
university has also created a sustainability group made up of staff from across the
organisation in order to plan, co-ordinate, monitor and report on the implementation of
the university’s sustainability policy.
McMillin and Dyball (2009) report that many universities are taking proactive steps
towards reducing the environmental impact of their operations. However, a recent report
by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) suggests that, while the importance of the
green agenda is increasingly well-recognised, too few organisations are taking the urgent
action needed to transform the UK economy for a low-carbon future (Wehrmeyer, Leitner
& Woodman, 2009). There is also a distinct gap in research examining the environmental
impact of people at work. Of the 165 relevant articles examined in a recent review of green
behaviours (Davis & Challenger, 2009), the vast majority focused on sustainable behaviours
in the home – the workplace was almost entirely overlooked. This is despite the consensus
that an understanding of human attitudes and behaviour in the workplace is necessary in
order to help change behaviour away from environmentally harmful activities and towards
environmental sustainability (Lorenzoni & Pidgeon, 2006).

Psychologists are able to contribute to climate change research through the identification
of the barriers that prevent people from changing their behaviour. This in turn should
help to determine what actions need to be taken to encourage sustainable development
behaviours (Spence, Pidgeon & Uzzell, 2009). The CMI suggest that developing an
understanding of employees’ personal attitudes about climate change is an important
step in implementing a successful environmental management programme (Wehrmeyer
et al., 2009).
Attributions as a key psychological mechanism

The study had two key aims: to explore the barriers identified by staff to acting in a
sustainable way at work, and to investigate the causes attributed to acting (or not) in
environmentally-responsible ways. In addition, this study aimed to explore differences in
attributions between Environmental Champions and non-Champions. Environmental
Champions are members of staff at City University who volunteer to raise environmental
awareness and foster a culture of responsibility within their department. According to
attribution theorists, individuals take part in a process of sense-making in order to identify
the causes of important events (Wong & Weiner, 1981). An attribution can be defined as
‘any statement in which an outcome is indicated as having happened, or being present,
because of some identified event or condition’ (Stratton et al., 1988, p.36). Attributions are
a fundamental part of social perception, and the way in which an individual explains an
event is likely to have an impact on subsequent judgements, affective reactions and
behaviour (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Silvester, 2004; Weiner, 1986). Therefore, in terms of
helping people to develop the attitudes, skills and knowledge to make informed decisions
regarding sustainable living, attribution theory has an important role to play.
There could be a number of causes attributed for particular events, but Weiner (1979;
1986) suggests that these causes can be classified along three dimensions. These
dimensions are: locus, which refers to whether an event has occurred because of
dispositional (internal) or situational (external) factors; stability, which indicates the extent
to which a cause is seen to be either stable or unstable in the future, and controllability,
which refers to the extent of control individuals perceive that they have over the outcome.
A more recent addition is the personal-universal dimension, which refers to whether any
element of the attribution relates to something distinctive about the speaker (Stratton et
al., 1988). In total, six dimensions were employed in the current study (see Table 1 for an
account of each dimension).
Research suggests that the causal dimensions are more strongly related to subsequent
reactions, intentions and behaviours than the specific causes themselves (Russell, 1982;
Weiner, 1986). For example in the context of sustainability, an individual might attribute
different causes for the reason they did not recycle a piece of paper: either situational
causes such as the lack of recycling facilities (external attribution); or dispositional causes
such as lack of knowledge of the importance of recycling or simply not caring (internal
attribution).
It follows therefore that the way in which the attribution is made can result in different
affective, cognitive or behavioural outcomes (Weiner, 1985; 1986). Thus in a university
context, if negative outcomes (such as not recycling) are associated with external
attributions (such as lack of recycling facilities), this can be dealt with using organisational
48 Going Green:
Dimension Description
This dimension depends on whether any of the three elements of the

attribution (cause, link outcome) relate to behaviour that may have an
impact on the Earth’s environment. Positive attributions reflect pro-
Positive-Negative
environmental behaviour (e.g. recycling waste paper) whereas as
negative attributions indicate harmful or unhelpful environmental
behaviour (e.g. leaving computers on overnight).
Internal attributions indicate causes which are directly related to the
Internal-External individual, whereas attributions coded as external reflect causes which
are attributed to impersonal or situational factors (Stratton et al, 1988).
This dimension indicates how much influence an individual believes
Controllable- they have over events. A cause is controllable when the speaker could
Uncontrollable reasonably be expected to influence the outcome without undue effort
(Silvester, 1997).
A stable dimension indicates causes that are believed to be relatively

permanent or unchanging, and thus likely to influence future
Stable-Unstable
outcomes. An unstable cause is typically a transitory factor that will
not influence outcomes very far into the future (Munton et al., 1999).
This relates to the importance of the cause. A cause coded as global

would be one which could potentially influence several different
Global-Specific
outcomes. A cause rated as specific would be one which has only a
minimal impact on a narrow range of outcomes (Silvester, 1997).
This dimension depends on whether any of the three elements of the

attribution (cause, link outcome) relates to anything distinctive about
the speaker. Personal attributions mean something unique to the
Personal-Universal
speaker is implied. A universal attribution applies when there is no
indication that the individual sees anything idiosyncratic in their
statement (Stratton et al, 1988).
Table 1: Description for Causal Dimensions of Attributions
interventions (e.g. adding more accessible recycling bins). On the other hand, if negative
outcomes are associated with internal attributions (such as not caring about recycling
paper) then it may be harder to deal with using interventions.
Theoretical rubrics such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TOPB; Ajzen, 1985) have
proven useful in predicting certain specific pro-environmental behaviours (Stern, Dietz &
Guagnano, 1995) and, based upon such findings, the current research suspected that
control was likely to be a significant factor in relation to sustainable behaviour in the
workplace. Other relevant factors that were thought to be of significance included whether
an attribution is coded as internal or external, and whether it is personal or universal.
Previous research has implied an association between personal values and constructs such
as personal norms, environmental awareness and attitudes towards recycling (Do Valle et

al., 2005). The internal-external dimension has been shown to be important to individuals’
subsequent reactions, attitudes and behavioural intentions (Weiner, 1985). Based on these
ideas, the study had a number of particular hypotheses which were developed as follows.
Environmental Champions will score higher on the Positive, Personal, Internal and Controllable
dimensions than Non-Champions.
Environmental Champions are expected to adopt green practices with their department
and encourage colleagues to follow suit. It was therefore predicted that they would make
more Positive attributions than Non-Champions. In addition, Champions may feel they
have more control regarding green behaviour as their levels of knowledge and awareness
regarding the university’s energy, waste and recycling systems are likely to be greater.
Environmental knowledge is an important factor regarding environmental concern
(Davidson & Freudenberg, 1996), and concern is associated with perceived behavioural
control (Do Valle et al., 2005). Concern and control are also associated with personal
norms and values, and so it was also predicted that Champions would score higher on the
Personal and Internal dimensions than Non-Champions.
Positive attributions will be higher on the Personal, Internal and Controllable dimensions than
Negative attributions.
Regardless of who is making the attribution, it was predicted that there would be a greater
number of Positive (pro-environmental) attributions that are coded as Personal, Internal
and Controllable than are coded as Universal, External and Uncontrollable.
The concept of control has been shown to be associated with certain specific pro-
environmental behaviours (Stern, Dietz & Guagnano, 1995). Previous research has also
indicated that impersonal or situational factors (i.e. External) are less likely to drive
positive behaviours than factors which directly relate to the individual (i.e. Personal,
Internal) (Do Valle et al., 2005; Weiner, 1985).
The research process

The study used a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Twenty
participants were recruited from a range of roles and departments within City University
London. Eight were male and twelve were female. Fifty per cent of participants were
Environmental Champions. Participants were recruited via email and all were invited to
take part in the research on a voluntary basis.
The interviews were semi-structured and had duration of 25 to 30 minutes. Questions were
designed to elicit responses relating to the participants’ attitudes and behaviours associated
with sustainable behaviour in the workplace. Since behaviours relating to recycling, energy
conservation and the use of resources were deemed the most important in the context of
this university, these were focused on in the interview questions.
All interviews were transcribed verbatim. A content analysis (Bryman, 2001) of the
interview transcripts was then undertaken to identify key themes relating to
environmentally-responsible behaviour. Content analysis is a technique for analysing
qualitative data that sorts the data into different categories according to its content
(Arnold et al., 2005).
50 Going Green:
In order to identify the causes attributed to acting (or not) in a sustainable way at work,
attributions were extracted from the transcripts and coded in accordance with the Leeds
Attributional Coding System (LACS) (Stratton et al., 1988). Following LACS guidelines,
the attributions were coded from the point of view of the speaker so that the meaning that
the individual wants to convey is coded, whether or not the researcher agrees with or
believes the statement (Silvester, 2004).
Over 1,000 attributions were extracted from the interviews and each was rated along a
three-point scale where 1 = unstable, external, uncontrollable, universal and 3 = stable,
internal, controllable, personal. To aid further analyses, each attribution was also coded in
relation to whether the outcome of the attribution is negative or positive (Silvester, 2004).
Those attributions relating to either a negative or undesired occurrence were coded as
1 = ‘negative’ and those attributions that referred to either a positive or desired occurrence
were coded as 3 = ‘positive’. Examining the positive-negative dimension of attributions was
useful in this context for understanding attributional patterns. Below is an example of a
coded attribution:
‘I can actually read e-mails and so on >so I don’t need to print any of it off”
This attribution was coded as Positive (3) – Internal (3) – Controllable (3) – Stable (3) –
Global (3) – Personal (3)
■ Positive – by not printing emails, paper resources are conserved:
a positive environmental behaviour
■ Internal – the cause reflects something that the speaker does:
‘I can actually read e-mails…’
■ Controllable – the speaker has control over whether or not they read e-mails
■ Stable – the fact that the speaker can read e-mails is likely to be relatively permanent
and unchanging
■ Global – the capability to read e-mails is quite important and is likely to impact on a
range of outcomes
■ Personal – the speaker indicates that both the cause and outcome relates to
something about him or her: ‘I can…’; ‘I don’t need…’
A sample of the data was coded by an independent second coder, who was also trained in
the use of LACS, to establish reliability. Cohen’s Kappa coefficient was calculated for each
coding dimension. Kappa values in the range of 0.4 to 0.6 are considered fair, between 0.6
and 0.75 is good, and above 0.75 is excellent (Carter, 2004). Reliability of coding was found
to range from fair to excellent.
Finally, statistical analyses were performed on the coded data using SPSS. Since the data
was drawn from populations that were not normally distributed, non-parametric tests were
employed: Mann-Whitney U to investigate differences, and Spearman’s Rho to explore
relationships.

Main themes and barriers relating to sustainable behaviour at work
A content analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken to establish common themes
in the text and identify potential barriers to sustainability in the workplace. Table 2
contains a summary of main themes and sub-themes. Quotations from the transcripts have
been included to provide an illustration for each theme.
Main Theme Sub-Theme Example

Acceptance of issue ‘I think there is an important need to engage
& the need to organisations and people more with what it means to
address it them and what contribution they can make’
Climate Change
& Sustainability ‘I don’t see it as something that’s in the full front of my
Scepticism over its mind on a daily basis. I don’t see it as being that
importance important or something for me to do when I’ve got a
million other things going on’
‘A lot of people just don’t turn their monitors off and it’s
Energy Use
just a simple thing to do’
‘You want to do it double-sided, but my printer doesn’t
Paper & Printing
do double-sided printing’
‘After the meeting, there were about 100 water bottles
Water
sitting there. We easily could have done that with tap water’
Sustainable ‘You try and put something in the right bin; it doesn’t
Waste & Recycling
Behaviour at matter because it’s already full of the wrong stuff’
Work
‘Should you travel 5000 miles to a meeting?
Travel I personally think people shouldn’t make the case of
travelling by air’
‘We just purchased recycled photocopy paper. I think it’s
Purchasing
nearly twice the price, which is a bit scandalous’
‘I generally don’t encourage people to do things
Personal Factors
differently than they would be doing, no matter what it is’
‘I think the next thing to do is to extend the
Ideas to improve
Environmental Champions initiative to student
sustainability at
environmental champions and environmental
work
ambassadors on the student body’
Comments & “A lot of the stuff that I do, I learn from the person I
Positive Comments
Suggestions share the office with’
‘It’s quite difficult to find some balance between having a

choice and actually choosing the right thing to do’
Issues / Problems
‘There isn’t just one way to get people to change their
behaviour’
Table 2: Interview themes
52 Going Green:
The content analysis of the interview transcripts resulted in the identification of the
following types of barrier to sustainable behaviour at work (see Table 3):
Barrier Description Example extract
The perception that the individual ‘The heating and air cooling in this
Lack of Control
is unable to change the situation building are outside my control’
Lack of Lack of knowledge regarding ‘I don’t know whether you can do double-
Knowledge energy or resource conservation sided printing on this printer’
Lack of ‘You want people to turn off monitors and
Others demonstrating little or no
Engagement speakers and even though you do ask, it
interest in behaving sustainably
from Others doesn’t happen’
‘There are some rooms I’ve taught in,
Not having appropriate or
particularly in the main building, where
Lack of sufficient resources to save energy
there is a bin for recycling and no other
Resources and minimise waste in the
bin. And if that’s the only bin, people are
workplace
going to put everything in it’
‘People don’t know what they’re supposed
to do and they don’t understand enough
Lack of Not knowing if one’s behaviour is
about how they can manage things better.
Feedback having the desired effect
Sometimes there’s not much feedback on
what success they’ve had’
‘You have to purchase from an approved
supplier. They have a green book so you
‘Green’ options often viewed as
Costs can get some things from there. But
more expensive
there’s always the cost as well: people
have budgets’
Perception that job requirements

‘My work is very paper-based, so I find it
Nature of Work may reduce ability to behave in
quite difficult to reduce the amount I use’
accordance with green values
Feeling that behaving in a ‘I don’t really so strongly about recycling

Personal Values sustainable way at work is at work because I don’t see it quite so
unimportant or unnecessary much as being my responsibility’
Feeling that, at work, ‘We have our staff department meetings
Group Values sustainability is generally very low every month or every 6 weeks. We never
on the agenda had a talk about this sort of thing’
Table 3: Barriers to sustainable behaviour at work
Attributional Analyses
The first hypothesis proposed that Champions would score higher on the Positive,
Personal, Internal and Controllable dimensions than Non-Champions. This hypothesis was
found to be partially supported. Champions scored significantly higher than Non-

Champions on the Positive dimension (p<0.01), but not on the Personal, Internal or
Controllable dimensions.
Figure 1 reveals that the pattern of results for Champions closely resembles that for non-
Champions. Both score highly on the Stable dimension, and relatively low on the Internal
and Global dimensions.
Figure 1: Differences between Champions and Non-Champions
Dimensions
1 Positive 4 Stable
2 Internal 5 Global
3 Controllable 6 Personal
The second hypothesis proposed that Positive attributions would be higher on the
Personal, Internal and Controllable dimensions than Negative attributions. This hypothesis
was fully supported: Positive attributions were significantly higher than Negative
attributions on the Personal (p<0.01), Internal (p<0.01) and Controllable (p<0.01)
dimensions.
Figure 2 reveals that the pattern of results for Positive attributions is that similar to that of
Negative attributions, with the notable exception of the Personal dimension, where mean
score for Positive attributions is significantly higher than the mean score for Negative
attributions.
54 Going Green:
Figure 2: Differences between Positive and Negative Attributions
Estimated Marginal Means
Dimensions
Dimensions
1 Positive 4 Stable
2 Internal 5 Global
3 Controllable 6 Personal
What do these findings mean and how do they compare to other

research in the area?
This study aimed to explore the barriers identified by university staff to acting in a
sustainable way at work, as well as the causes attributed to acting in environmentally-
responsible ways. A content analysis of twenty interview transcripts revealed that lack of
control, lack of knowledge and lack of resources were the most salient of barriers identified
by the members of staff. Lack of feedback was also shown to be an important factor, along
with cost, nature of work, personal values, group values, and engagement by others.
The causes attributed to acting in sustainable ways were examined via attribution coding.
The results found that Positive attributions were associated with Internal, Controllable and
Personal dimensions. It was thus inferred that, for a positive environmental behaviour to
occur:
■ the individual will perceive it as something distinctive about themselves;
■ the cause for the positive environmental behaviour will be directly related to the
individual, rather than being attributed to impersonal or situational factors; and
■ it is important that individuals believe that they have some control over events.
This study also found that Champions made significantly more Positive attributions than
Non-Champions. This seems to indicate that Champions engage in more pro-

environmental behaviours than Non-Champions, and, if this is the case, it can be said that
Environmental Champions ‘practice what they preach’. This is a relevant finding for the
university since individuals tend to look to others before determining their actions.
Information about how other people behave, together with beliefs concerning those
referents’ opinion about that behaviour, are thought to be important determining factors
that affect recycling involvement (Do Valle et al., 2005). By setting an example to other
members of staff, Environmental Champions can help to effect positive change with
regards to an organisation’s drive to ‘go green’.
The findings of this study have implications for organisational development and change
initiatives. An organisation can reduce its impact on the environment by ensuring that
appropriate measures are in place to enable employees to save energy and conserve
resources during the course of their business. Gaining a better understanding of people at
work, we can ensure that interventions are successful. Since perceived control is vital in this
context, any intervention to encourage people to adopt green behaviours at work must be
straightforward and relatively undemanding where individuals have control.
Personal and internal factors also play an important role. An element of the behaviour
(e.g. the reason or the outcome) should relate directly to the individual, rather than being
solely attributed to impersonal or situational factors. For instance, if personal energy
consumption formed part of an employee’s annual appraisal, it should have a greater
impact on his or her behaviour than if everyone in the organisation were simply told to use
less energy. Wehrmeyer et al. (2009) suggest that individual performance targets and
performance-management systems may be used to bring about change in an organisation.
McMillin and Dyball (2009, p.56) state that ‘institutions of higher education play a
significant role in the search for a more sustainable future’ and that increasing
consideration is being given to sustainability with regards to campus operations,
curriculum and academic research. They advocate a ‘whole-of-university’ approach to
sustainability in which the research, educational and operational activities of an institution
are explicitly linked, and where students are engaged in each of these activities. This
approach, they claim, can allow universities to ‘optimise their role as agents of change for a
sustainable future’ (McMillin & Dyball, 2009, p.56). There is also little reason to doubt that
universities could save money by adopting sustainable practices. Wehrmeyer et al. (2009)
cite a hotel chain that reported cost savings of 15 per cent thanks to a green programme
implemented at minimal expense.
56 Going Green:
Recommendations for promoting sustainability in large
organisations
A number of recommendations for implementing sustainable practices at work can be
made on the basis of the results of this study.
1) Encourage flexible working as a means to save energy; for example, enable staff to
work from home where possible.
2) Set ‘green’ targets. Ensure that staff at all levels are aware of the targets and are
supported to achieved them
3) Provide feedback to staff regarding the organisation’s environmental performance.
This helps to improve personal ‘meaningfulness’ and thus should have a positive
impact on sustainable behaviours
4) Provide education and training regarding sustainability at work. This should enable
staff to feel that they have greater control over their environment, and again helps to
improve ‘meaningfulness’
5) Offer rewards and incentives to encourage green behaviour in the workplace
6) Consider implementing schemes such as the Environmental Champion network
The author hopes that these suggestions will help organisations to foster sustainable
behaviour in their workforce, enabling them to ‘go green’ without costing the earth.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Dr Zibarras in the
design and implementation of the study, and in the composition of this chapter.
Dr Lara D. Zibarras, Psychology Department, City University London, Northampton
Square, London, EC1V 0HB (e-mail: l.zibarras@city.ac.uk)
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58 Going Green:
Green behaviour: Differences in recycling behaviour
between the home and the workplace
Dr Seonaidh McDonald, Robert Gordon University
In 2008 the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency reported that commercial waste
amounted to 5.75 million tonnes, compared with 2.94 million tonnes of domestic waste.
Despite the fact that waste arising in commercial premises is nearly double that produced
by households in the UK, the study of recycling in the workplace is less common than the
study of recycling at home (Marans & Lee, 1993). Some of the work that has been done on
recycling within commercial settings has focused on specific commercial recycling schemes
(see for example Bacot, McCoy &Plagman-Galvin, 2002; Clay, 2005). In a parallel to the
research which aims to characterise the domestic recycler and understand the antecedents
to their (non) recycling behaviour, there is a strand of research in the environmental
psychology tradition which tries to establish predictors of the employee characteristics (see
for example Marans& Lee, 1993), organisational characteristics (see for example
Maclaren& Yu, 1997) or scheme design factors (see for example Brothers, Krantz &
McClannahan,1994; Ludwig, Gray & Rowell, 1998) which will lead to successful recycling
initiatives.
The focus on the reduction of domestic, rather than commercial, waste may have been
fuelled by the UK Government targets for the increase in recycling rates (DEFRA, 2007).
This has contributed to the lack of attention to workplaces as contexts for the production
of many waste streams also found in domestic waste. There is also perhaps an underlying
assumption that recyclers will behave in similar ways in their domestic context and at work.
However, recent work has shown that people do not recycle in the same ways in different
contexts. Studies have shown that people do not necessarily continue to recycle whilst on
holiday (Barr et al., 2010) or while away at university (Scott, 2009). This raises the question
of whether people who have established patterns of recycling at home can or do translate
these practices into recycling at work.The first study which attempted to make a link
between home and work place recycling was by Lee, De Young and Marans (1995) which
examined whether private recycling behaviour was a useful predictor of participation in
office recycling schemes. The study surveyed nearly 1,800 Taiwanese office workers from 32
different firms, and found that although prior (home) recycling experience of a specific
material was a predictor of office recycling, the actual rates of recycling at work were much
lower than those reported at home. In the UK context, this result was also obtained by a
study of the recycling habits of university staff and students (Clay, 2005).
This chapter describes a small study which aims to ascertain whether there is a difference
between recycling behaviour at home and at work. However, rather than focus on a specific
work environment (offices, university), it surveys a population with access to comparable
opportunities to recycle their household waste, but makes no inferences about their
specific employment setting.

Surveying recycling behaviour
A short questionnaire was designed to survey householders about their recycling habits in
the home and in the workplace. The questionnaire consisted of a single A4 sheet with a
cover letter on one side (see Figure 1) and the questions on the other (see Figure 2).
Figure 1: Cover letter Figure 2: Questionnaire
The design of the questionnaire was deliberately kept very simple with the fewest possible
questions in order to facilitate as high a response rate as possible. For example, a decision
was taken not to ask householders for any demographic information which would lengthen
the questionnaire and make people less willing to participate.
The questionnaires were placed inside an open freepost envelope and hand delivered to
1,000 households in Banchory, a small town in the North East of Scotland during June
2010. Householders were asked to complete the questionnaire, place it back into the
freepost envelope and put it in the post. The questionnaires were not marked in any way
and so the responses to the survey were entirely anonymous.
Banchory was selected for the study as it is a small commuter town in the Aberdeenshire
countryside. Many of Banchory’s residents are employed in the oil and gas industry in
nearby Aberdeen, 16 miles away. However, the area is also home to thriving farming,
tourism and timber related industries which also employ a proportion of residents,
providing the potential to get information about recycling in rural, as well as urban,
workplaces. Households were sampled by taking consensus samples of 40 streets in
Banchory which were randomly selected to ensure representation form a wide range of
council tax bands. All of the households in the town receive the same municipal recycling
facilities provided by Aberdeenshire Council:
60 Going Green:
■ a fortnightly doorstep collection of paper and white/grey cardboard;
■ A fortnightly doorstep collection of mixed glass, plastic bottles and food and drink
cans;
■ a recycling centre which provides for the disposal of paper, glass, plastic bottles,
cardboard (any), food and drinks cans, cardboard drinks packs, telephone directories
(periodically), textiles, scrap metal, garden waste, soil, rubble, oil, car batteries,
domestic batteries, WEEE, domestic appliances and furniture as well as general
household waste; and
■ several ‘bring’ sites scattered across the town in car parks near parks, schools and
supermarkets which also provide a range of banks for glass, paper, paper, glass, plastic
bottles, cardboard (any), food and drinks cans and textiles.
People recycle less at work than at home

A total of 220 responses was received from the 1,000 households surveyed, giving a
response rate of 22 per cent, which is very healthy for a postal questionnaire. The
responses were all coded and entered into a spreadsheet for analysis.
In all environmental research there is always a tendency for respondents to exaggerate,
and so any results obtained through a postal survey must be treated with caution. This is
partly because respondents feel social pressure to be seen to be as ‘green’ as possible, and
partly because in any survey situation respondents seek to be helpful in their reporting.
Both of these factors can lead to householders ticking a box to say that they recycle a
particular material even if they have only done so once, or have an intention to begin
doing it, for example. Added to this is the fact that although the households which
received the questionnaires were sampled according to a framework (see above), those
that responded are effectively self-selected. Together these issues would lead us to expect
that the numbers of materials reported to be recycled here are rather higher than an
examination of actual recycling behaviour would suggest. However, this does not
significantly affect much of the analysis that follows as this study is concerned with
comparing home and workplace recycling, rather than the absolute figures reported, and
it is reasonable to assume that any inflation of the figures will affect both the estimations of
home and workplace recycling equally. It is also useful to note that 8 (3.64 per cent) of the
respondents reported that they did not recycle any materials at home or at work. This
suggests that the data presented here do contain an element of balance between recyclers
and non-recyclers.
Figure 3 shows the numbers of each of the different materials that the respondents
recycled at home, and at work. Some of the larger differences are easily understood. For
example, the large variance between the numbers of respondents recycling garden waste
and textiles at home and at their place of work may well be as much to do with the
occurrence of these groups of materials as to do with the behaviour of the respondents
themselves. A number of respondents wrote comments on their questionnaires to this
effect. However, other differences are more interesting. Glass is a very common household
recyclable, and has the longest history of collection from domestic waste for recycling in
the UK. However, although some 95 per cent of respondents recycled glass at home, their
workplace recycling is comparatively low at just under 28 per cent (see Table 1). Some of
the comments suggested that the provision of recycling facilities for glass was considered a

Figure 3: Materials recycled at home and at work

Home Work Difference
Paper 95.00% 71.36% +23.64%
Glass 95.00% 27.73% +67.27%
Plastic 94.55% 49.55% +45.00%
Metal 70.91% 26.36% +44.55%
Cardboard 83.18% 58.18% +25.00%
Garden 69.09% 7.73% +61.36%
Food 32.73% 12.73% +20.00%
Textiles 65.91% 8.64% +57.27%
Other 17.27% 10.00% +7.27%
Table 1: Percentages of respondents who recycle each material

safety hazard by their employers. The differences between the numbers of respondents
recycling their garden waste and food waste suggests that they are taking their garden waste
to the local recycling centre rather than composting at home.
Overall, then, although similar materials are recycled at home and at work, Table 1 shows
that many more respondents recycle each of the materials at home than they do at work. A
further analysis shows that 89.55 per cent of the survey respondents recycled more
materials at home than they did at work.
62 Going Green:
What’s the reason for the difference between recycling at home and
at work?
This pilot study confirms that recycling in the home is more common than recycling in the
workplace. Even people who recycle a wide range of materials at home do not seem to
translate those habits into their workplace contexts. Now that this difference has been
established, further study will be required to ascertain why this situation has arisen. Some
of the comments offered in response to the open question at the end of the questionnaire
(see Figure 1) offer insights into why this is the case.
One of the most common statements made by respondents was that they could not recycle
many of the materials at work because they either did not arise in a work setting or that
there were no facilities to recycle them at work. Whilst it is likely that in many workplaces
some materials, such as glass, are found in lower quantities than they might be a home, it is
extremely unlikely that they are entirely absent from a workplace. For example, although
jam jars and ketchup bottles might be relatively rare, soft drink bottles and coffee jars may
well be found in many workplaces. Waste Watch estimates that 3 per cent of commercial
and office waste is glass (Waste Online, 2004). Reporting occasional occurrence of
recyclables as non-occurrence is something that has been found in previous studies of non-
recyclers (McDonald & Oates, 2003). Equally, assertions that no facilities exist at work
should be treated with caution as several respondents reported that there were no facilities
in Banchory to recycle metals (although food and drink cans are included in the
fortnightly doorstep collection and banks are available at the recycling centre as well as at a
number of points throughout the town) or garden waste (despite a dedicated skip located
at the recycling centre).
Another theme underlying many responses was that of responsibility. By noting that no
facilities were available to them at their workplace, respondents may be seeking to absolve
themselves from the responsibility of their non-recycling behaviour. Studies of domestic
recycling have found that low recycling rates are often attributed to the lack of facilities
provided, or the design of the schemes which are available. In an interesting parallel, the
‘fault’ here is transferred from the municipal providers of the domestic services to the
collective employers. This is underlined by a few respondents who reported that they assumed
that their waste was being recycled (even when no sorting or storing of recyclables was in
evidence) or that they didn’t know whether it was recycled or not. The responsibility for
sorting waste is further blurred when cleaning services are outsourced to another company.
However, there is a small group of individuals who report that they take their recyclables
home with them to recycle them along with their own household waste. One respondent
noted that although there was workplace recycling, a colleague had set it up informally and
simply took the recyclables away periodically and put them in banks on her way home. For
those determined to recycle in the workplace, informal systems have been put in place to
counter lack of official provision in some work places.
Conclusions
Further work will be required to understand the differences in the habits uncovered in this
pilot study. However, it does show that this is an important area for future study as it is clear
that people’s domestic recycling habits are not necessarily being carried over into their

workplaces.This finding underlines and extends the work of Clay (2005) and Lee, De
Young and Marans (1995) by showing that when the sampling is done in such a way as to
include a wide and unspecified range of employment contexts, private behaviours are not
being reproduced at work, regardless of workplace.
What is also clear is that respondents feel that the responsibility for the lack of recycling lies
with the employers. With commercial waste continuing to grow year on year (SEPA, 2010)
the problem of recycling at work will remain an issue. However, if employers are failing to
engage even those people who have already made decisions to recycle within their private
lives, more research is needed to understand how to grow workplace recycling.
Overall, this study has shown that a much larger, national study will be required in order to
understand how best to meet the promised UK government targets for recycling of
commercial wastes (DEFRA, 2007).
References
Bacot, H., McCoy, W. & Plagman-Galvin, J. (2002). Municipal commercial recycling:
Barriers to success. The American Review of Public Administration 32(2), 145–165.
Barr, S., Shaw, G., Coles, T. & Prillwitz, J. (2010). ‘A holiday is a holiday’: Practicing
sustainability, home and away. Journal of Transport Geography, in press.
Brothers, K.J., Krantz, P.J. & McClannahan, L.E. (1994). Office paper recycling: A function
of container proximity. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 27(1), 153–160.
Clay, S. (2005). Increasing university recycling: Factors influencing recycling behaviour
among students at Leeds University. Earth and Environment 1, 186–228.
DEFRA (2007). Waste strategy for England 2007. London: DEFRA.
Lee, Y.-J., De Young, R. & Marans, R.W. (1995). Factors affecting individual recycling
behavior in office settings: A study of office workers in Taiwan. Environment and
Behavior, 27(3), 381–402.
Ludwig, T.D., Gray, T.W. & Rowell, A. (1998) Increasing recycling in academic buildings:
A systematic replication. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 31(4), 683–686.
Marans, R.W. & Lee, Y.-J. (1993) Linking recycling behavior to waste management planning:
A case study of office workers in Taiwan. Landscape and Urban Planning 26, 203–214.
McDonald, S. & Oates, C.J. (2003). Reasons for non-participation in a kerbside recycling
scheme. Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 39(4), 369–385.
McLaren, V.W. & Yu, C.-C.(1997). Solid waste recycling behavior of industrial-commercial-
institutional establishments. Growth and Change, 28 (Winter), 93–109.
Scott, A.K. (2009). Towards sustainable consumption: Understanding the adoption and practice of
environmental actions in households. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
SEPA (2010). Waste data digest 10: Key facts and trends. Edinburgh: SEPA and Scottish
Government.
Waste Online (2004). Waste at work information sheet. Available from: www.wasteonline.org.uk/
resources/InformationSheets/WasteAtWork.htm accessed Nov 2010.
64 Going Green:
Green behaviour change: HOT topics
Dr Mike Page & Nadine Page, University of Hertfordshire
Climate change is a psychological problem. A rather stark statement maybe, but one which
is, we think, defensible. To be sure, the mitigation of the effects of climate change poses
very great technological challenges. However, the fact is that technologies that are widely
available today are capable of making a very large dent in the carbon dioxide emissions
that are thought to underlie the problem. To give just one of a plethora of possible
examples: according to DEFRA, the average family car in the UK emits around 215g CO2
per kilometre; by contrast, the most fuel-efficient family car currently available emits
around 90g CO2 per kilometre and, with the advent of plug-in hybrids over the next two
years, this figure is likely to be further reduced to around 65g. For those (like the UK
Government) seeking a 70-80 per cent cut in carbon emissions from private cars, the
problem therefore is not a technological one but a behavioural one: how can we get
people to adopt existing low-carbon technologies in their everyday lives?
The same considerations apply to businesses. We are engaged in a project called EASIER
(Environmental Assistance to SMEs In the Eastern Region), which advises small businesses
on ways in which they can reduce their carbon emissions. What has become clear from this
engagement is that there are many opportunities for such businesses to make changes that
substantially reduce both emissions and ongoing costs. Where these changes involve
modest capital investment (as they often do), there are funds available, interest free, from
organisations such as the Carbon Trust, a facility which contributes to a powerful case for
change. Nonetheless, we frequently find senior managers reluctant to proceed. Again, the
problem is neither technological nor financial: it is psychological.
In this chapter, we will give a brief outline of a framework that we are developing with regard
to pro-environmental behaviour change, for people at home and at work. We will start by
noting the relatively limited success that psychological/behavioural interventions have
enjoyed in the past. As a consequence, we will suggest that the net be cast rather wider in the
search for psychological techniques that might usefully be applied in this domain. For
mnemonic reasons, if nothing else, we will focus our discussion around the HOT topics of
the title: habits, opportunities and thoughts. As will be seen, for expository reasons the
discussion doesn’t necessarily deal with them strictly in this acronym-friendly order.
Psychological interventions in the service of the environment

While space considerations preclude a detailed review of the effectiveness of broadly
psychological techniques in environmental domains such as energy use, recycling and
transport, several such reviews have been conducted in recent years. For example,
Abrahamse, Steg, Vlek and Rothengatter (2005) conducted a detailed review into
psychological interventions aimed at reducing household energy consumption. They
divided the interventions into antecedent interventions, such as supplying households with

information about energy-saving measures, and consequent interventions, such as offering
feedback and/or rewards in response to certain behaviours.
Their conclusions were not overwhelmingly positive. There were relatively small beneficial
effects of antecedent interventions: the provision of tailored information (i.e. information
tailored to the specific circumstances of the target household), commitment and goal
setting (i.e. asking households to commit to a relatively difficult energy-saving target), and
modelling (i.e. giving worked examples of recommended behaviours), all had modest
success. This success was not always maintained after a plausible follow-up period. Mass
information campaigns were found to increase knowledge, and sometimes to change
attitudes, but to have little effect on the adoption of specific energy-saving behaviours – a
rather salutary message for Governments the world over. Of the consequent interventions,
frequent feedback (particularly in a competitive context), and the provision of rewards,
both showed moderate success. Once again, the effectiveness of these interventions was
greatest during the active intervention itself and didn’t always survive a post-intervention
period.
Of all the interventions reviewed by Abrahamse et al. (2005), perhaps the most promising
was the EcoTeam Programme, ETP), as evaluated in the Netherlands by Staats, Harland
and Wilke (2004). ETP involves participants joining small groups of colleagues, neighbours
and friends, and participating in meetings once a month. At these meetings, information is
shared and feedback is given on both individual and group performance, the latter being
assessed relative to that of other EcoTeams. It is not difficult to see that the ETP
programme therefore takes advantage of all of the more successful interventions given
above, most particularly setting up a context in which commitment is key, information is
specific, and goals are set and reviewed in a comparative (and somewhat competitive)
context. The evaluation by Staats et al. suggested that all targeted aspects of pro-
environmental behaviour (including energy use, water use and waste) were substantially
reduced both during the programme and at a two-year follow up. This result argues for a
degree of eclecticism in the design of energy-reduction programmes: By drawing on a
variety of interventions whose individual success is perhaps modest, the ETP appears to
gain significant power to change behaviour immediately and over a sustained period. In
the next section, we will recommend yet more eclecticism in the design of pro-
environmental behaviour change programmes, drawing on techniques that have more
often been applied in the therapeutic and other health-related domains.
Habits, opportunities, thoughts

It is difficult to deny that people are prone to habitual behaviour in the domain of energy-
use, as in many other domains. Transport choice is perhaps the best researched of the
areas in which habits are cited as a negative environmental factor: specifically, the near
automatic favouring of the private car over public-transport alternatives is frequently
attributed to the force of habit. One can imagine, too, that the unnecessary turning on
(and leaving on) of lights or of heating systems, the disposal (rather than recycling) of
waste, or the unnecessary use of water (e.g. when brushing one’s teeth), would all be under
the influence of habits, rather than being driven by more rational consideration. Of
course, habits per se are not necessarily environmentally deleterious: one might equally be
in the habit of cycling to work, turning off lights and dutifully recycling. Nonetheless, the
66 Going Green:
environmental problems with which we are currently faced suggest that these ‘good’ habits
are not yet the norm. For this reason, a programme for pro-environmental behaviour
change will need to take seriously the constraints that habits place on human action and
on the possibilities of change.
A number of authors have looked at the habits relating to the environment (e.g.
Dahlstrand & Biel, 1997; Davidov, 2007; Klöckner & Matthies, 2004; Verplanken, Aarts &
van Knippenberg, 1997; Verplanken, Walker, Davis & Jurasek, 2008). Interestingly, habits in
relation to travel-mode choice were the focus for all of these authors other than Dahlstrand
and Biel. Those authors looked at the purchase of environmentally friendly detergents in
relation to a ‘stepwise model of behaviour change’ in this domain. Their model is
interesting. It proposed seven key steps in the development of an environmentally benign
habit: activation (i.e. attending to the environment as a value); attending to present
behaviour; consideration of alternative behaviours; planning new behaviour; testing new
behaviour; evaluation of new behaviour; and establishment of a new habit. Alongside each
of these steps, they postulated factors that either impede or promote progress at that point.
So for the third step (the consideration of alternative behaviours), they identified negative
beliefs about the alternatives as an impeding factor (see below), while the presence of
‘evident, existing alternatives’ was considered a promoting factor at this level. It is notable
that the first two of Dahlstrand and Biel’s (1997) seven steps come under the general
heading of attention. This accords with a crucial observation from our own practice with
client businesses, namely, that many people do not attend to, and are hence not aware of,
the energy that they are using in various aspects of their business. They are, in some sense,
blind to the energy, and hence to the money, that they are wasting.
The phenomenon of ‘inattentional blindness’ is well attested: people literally fail to see
features of the visual environment to which they are not attending, even when these
features are embarrassingly obvious to the same people once attention is drawn to them.
Perhaps the most well-known popular demonstration of this phenomenon is the so-called
‘invisible gorilla’ test of Simons and Chabris (1999). In this test, participants are asked to
watch a video showing two teams of three people (one team dressed in white, the other
black), each passing a basketball among them. To ensure that participants attend closely,
they are asked to count the number of passes completed by the team in white. Under these
conditions, a majority of participants are unable to report the appearance of a person
dressed as a gorilla as they walk across the field of view, even as they pause in centre-screen
in a melodramatic beating of the chest.
While less engaging than a person in a gorilla costume, the ways in which our clients
(among others) use unnecessary amounts energy and, hence, spend unnecessary money,
are no less invisible to the clients themselves, and no less obvious to the experts
performing energy audits. Of course, the analogy is not complete – the ‘blindness’ of our
clients is more conceptual than perceptual, and has a good deal to do with crystallised
knowledge rather than fluid processing. Nonetheless, a key first step in any intervention
involves encouraging clients to pay active attention to aspects of their energy performance
and to the details of those cost-effective alternatives that are available to them. It is this
change in attentional set, and this expansion is situation-specific knowledge, that we
capture in the Opportunities component of our HOT topics.

Interestingly, the ability to notice and act upon opportunities in the personal and business
environment has been related, outside the laboratory, to such apparently capricious
properties as luck. In a series of experiments, using participants who rated themselves as
either lucky or unlucky, my colleague Richard Wiseman showed that lucky people were
much more likely to spot potentially beneficial situations in their environment and,
moreover, they were more likely to act on those situations to secure a potential advantage.
In one experiment, participants were asked to flick through a newspaper and to count the
number of photographs. At various points in the newspaper, the experimenters had placed
half-page adverts proclaiming, in large-print, messages such as ‘STOP COUNTING:
THERE ARE 52 PHOTOGRAPHS IN HERE’, or even ‘WIN £100 BY TELLING THE
EXPERIMENTER YOU HAVE SEEN THIS’. The ‘unlucky’ people were much less likely to
spot the potentially beneficial messages than were their ‘lucky’ colleagues, strongly
suggesting that good luck is not always the random blessing of folklore, but is often
attributable to an attentional and dispositional stance. There is, of course, a sense in which
this is paradoxical: those participants who focussed most closely on the task in hand (i.e.
counting the photographs – ostensibly a good thing), were precisely those who missed the
opportunities. In the case of our client businesses, sometimes a too-close attention to their
core business can mask opportunities for cost (and emission) savings.
In his work with lucky (and successful) people, Wiseman also noted their propensity to
think differently about situations, seeing opportunities where others saw none. For
example, an unlucky person who broke their leg might think ‘Typical. Bad things always
happen to me. I’ll be stuck at home for weeks.’ By contrast, for a lucky person, the same
misfortune might be accompanied by the thought ‘Oh well. At least I’ll have plenty of time
to write that novel I’d always planned.’ This is, perhaps, a trite example, but it illustrates a
critical point relating to the third of our HOT Topics, namely Thoughts: the Thoughts that
one has can have a very significant effect on one’s subsequent behaviour. More particularly,
different thoughts can act as either impeders or promoters of pro-environment behaviour
change, a fact acknowledged explicitly in the stepwise framework of Dahlstrand and Biel
(1997). We will discuss thoughts in the next section.
Negative environmental thoughts

In this section about Thoughts, we would like to expand the discussion to include a
technique that is most often applied in clinical or counselling contexts, namely Cognitive
Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Specifically, we will acknowledge and deal with the potential
for negative environmental thoughts to act as a potential block to pro-environmental
behaviour change.
CBT is the name given to a class of talking therapies that is, in the UK, in the front line of
choices for clinical and subclinical disorders such as depression and anxiety. It is not
possible to give a detailed account of the theory and practice of CBT here, but some key
points will be instructive with regard to behaviour change more widely. The fundamental
observation underlying the CBT approach is often summarised using a quote from the
ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus, usually translated as, ‘Men [sic] are not disturbed by
things, but by the view that they take of them.’ To paraphrase: it is not events in the world
that directly and ineluctably cause emotional or other mental disturbance, rather it is the
thoughts/beliefs that an individual has about those events that intervene between the
68 Going Green:
events and the later feelings, and play a causal role in affecting the latter. Although it is
often misconstrued as attributing blame to the client for bringing about their own
problems by ‘thinking wrong’, this is a fundamentally an optimistic message. It is optimistic
in the following sense: if one genuinely thought that there was a direct (unmediated)
causal connection between events in the world and emotional consequences, one could
only change those emotional consequences by changing the way the world is. In many
circumstances, the ability to change events in the world is simply not a viable option: a
counsel of despair. If one accepts, however, that negative emotional consequences are
affected by the thoughts and beliefs that one has about events, then one has the ability to
modify those emotional consequences by changing the thoughts and beliefs. In many
circumstances, this is much more tractable than altering the events themselves.
In CBT, particularly for disorders of depression or anxiety, thoughts and beliefs are
categorised as being at three levels: negative automatic thoughts (NATs); negative core
beliefs; and nonadaptive rules for living. Very briefly, negative automatic thoughts are those
negative thoughts that are held to flood the mind at times of strain or challenge – they are
automatic, in the sense that they come to mind rapidly and unbidden, and they are
typically described as ‘irrational’ in one of a variety of ways. For example, a thought can be
irrational because it exhibits overly black-and-white reasoning, or because it
‘catastrophises’ a situation, frequently both. To give an example, someone who is socially
anxious may respond to a small mistake in a social situation with the NAT, ‘Oh God. That
was a total disaster. Those people must think that I’m a complete idiot!’. So a minor slip
has been characterised as a ‘total disaster’, and other people’s assessment is assumed to be
that one is a ‘complete idiot’ (this type of mindreading is another characteristic feature of
NATs). As they flood the mind, these NATs are thought to awake core negative beliefs
(e.g. ‘I am an absolute failure’) that have been a long time in gestation and are sometimes
described as ‘light sleepers’, ready to be activated at the slightest provocation. Finally, to
avoid these NATS and their stirring of the aversive core beliefs, people are supposed to
build around them a network of rules for living that minimises the unpleasantness that
results. So the socially anxious person who subscribes to these core beliefs and is prone to
these NATs, simply chooses to organise their life so as to minimise the negative affect. To
be specific, they might develop the rule ‘If I don’t go out, then I won’t experience this
unpleasantness’. So they stay indoors. Chances are, they become socially phobic: they
develop around them what they consider a ‘comfort zone’, but which other people can
clearly see is a highly constrained and inflexible space, that is, a discomfort zone.
So how does this relate to pro-environmental change? While we do not want to stretch the
analogy too far, a couple of examples drawn from direct experience should illustrate the
point.
Let us suppose that one of our clients is a hotel business which uses a large number of
halogen downlighters (the small spotlights that are often used in corridors and common
areas). Such downlighters are typically rated at a power consumption of 50W, though 35W
‘energy saving’ versions are also available. In many hotels, a significant proportion of such
lights will be on for approaching 24 hours a day, and so together they represent significant
energy consumption and, hence, significant cost and significant CO2 emissions. Let us
further suppose that the hotel manager has recently instituted a policy of switching the
50W versions to 35W as the old bulbs fail. Although they are a little more expensive at £2

each rather than £1.50, and they are a little dimmer, the manager has been vaguely
convinced that the hotel will save money in the long run. Finally, let us assume that,
notwithstanding this minor change in purchasing policy, the manager has not been
disabused of the deeply held suspicion that eco-friendly tends to equate with expensive.
While this deeply held suspicion is not directly identifiable with the sorts of ‘light sleeper’
core beliefs that a clinical patient might present in a CBT context, one can perhaps
imagine that it will indeed be awoken by a proposal, from an energy auditor, to switch all
the halogen bulbs to new LED bulbs, at a cost of £30 a piece! The negative automatic
thoughts (let us call them Negative Environmental Thoughts – NETs – in deference to
another handy acronym) come flooding in: ‘£30 pounds each! That’s ridiculously
expensive. Even if we had the money – which we don’t – the group manager would never
approve it. Anyway, I’ve already done my bit by moving to the 35W jobs. We’ll stick to what
we know, thanks!’ A caricature, perhaps, but in our experience one that is not too wide of
the mark. And, as it happens, a paradigmatic example of someone who is trapped in an
environmental (and financial) discomfort zone – someone, so to speak, caught in the NETs.
How can we, the environmental therapists as it were, help the hotel manager do the
environmentally friendly, and financially astute, thing. Well, first we have to establish some
facts about the LED bulbs. They do indeed cost £30, a price which, from a certain
perspective, does seem rather high. (Actually, in this fast moving world, the cost is now
down below £20, but let us stick here with the ‘harder sell’ with which we were presented at
the time.) What other perspective might we offer? The key is to note three things: first that
the LED bulb consumes around 7W of electrical power as contrasted with the 35W of even
the so-called ‘energy saving’ halogen bulb; second, that the LED bulb has an expected life
of 30,000 hours (with a three-year warranty), as opposed to the 2,000 hours for the
halogen; third, that the light quality of the two bulbs is approximately equivalent. Armed
with these facts we can plot the cumulative cost of the two types of bulb, assuming that
each is on for 20 hours a day, 365 days a year, and that electricity costs 10p/kWh. 0
Figure 1: The cumulative cost of a 35W Halogen vs 7W LED bulb

70 Going Green:
The comparative cost of the bulbs are shown in Figure 1. The regular kinks in the halogen
line represent the replacement cost, as each bulb lasts around 100 days. (Unrealistically, no
additional cost is assumed for the work involved in changing the bulbs, a cost that, if taken
into account, would only strengthen the case for change.) The intercept of the LED line
represents the £30 initial cost, while the gradients of each line represent the cost
implications of the differing power consumptions. What should be clear is that at around
day 330, the cumulative cost of the ‘energy saving’ halogen bulbs exceeds that of the LED
bulb. The investment in an LED bulb pays for itself in something less than a year. This 330-
day payback period means that the investment in LED bulbs is equivalent to doubling your
money in 660 days, in turn equivalent to getting tax-free, compounded interest at the bank
at an interest rate of 40 per cent. Over the three-year warranty period of the LED bulb,
each bulb saves £67, that is, a saving of £22 per bulb per year, or over £1,000 per year in a
(far from atypical) corridor containing 50 such bulbs.
So Epictetus had a point. By adopting a different perspective (in this case, towards what it
means to be expensive), our hotel manager might come to a different conclusion from
that embodied by their initial (automatic) assessment. When they learn that the capital
costs of the bulb replacement programme can be met by an interest-free loan from the
Carbon Trust, the case virtually makes itself: essentially, someone will lend them money at
zero rate of interest, for them to invest at a 40 per cent equivalent return! At the risk of
labouring the point (and an acronym), let us unpick our manager’s NETs: First, £30
doesn’t look ridiculously expensive any more – in fact, it looks like an unmissable
investment opportunity; second, there is no need to have the money upfront, since it is
available as an interest-free loan from the Carbon Trust; third, that bit of mind-reading
(‘The group manager would never approve it’) seems unlikely to be clairvoyant unless, of
course, the group manager is also NET-prone; fourth, the black-and-white thinking
embodied by the bald assertion that ‘I’ve done my bit’ (by moving to what is a very mildly
energy-saving alternative) is now rather less convincing than it might be; and, finally, the
assumed comfort zone (‘We’ll stick to what we know, thanks!) has now been exposed as the
discomfort zone that it truly is. As a last resort, the manager might retreat to an appeal not
to change those bulbs that have only recently been upgraded from 50W to 35W (‘I only put
them in last week!’) – a classic example of what decision theorists call a ‘sunk-cost fallacy’,
another form of cognitive distortion. An LED-bulb payback period of 330 days is entirely
independent of when the previous halogens were installed. Delaying the switch would only
be ‘throwing good money after bad’. Better get on with it.
A second, and briefer, example will, we hope, show that NETs can be implicated in a
refusal to take environmental problems seriously in the first place. How often has one
heard something like, ‘It doesn’t matter what I do – the Chinese are building two power
stations a week!’, used as a reason for failure to take pro-environmental action? We have no
idea whether this purported fact is even true, but let us suppose that it is. This is a classic
example of a NET, triggering the deeply held belief that we are all doomed: there’s
nothing we can do and, what is more, it’s someone else’s fault. What alternative perspective
might we encourage? Pointing out that China has recently become the world’s largest
emitter of carbon dioxide might not seem to be an obvious first gambit. Nonetheless, this
statement conceals a crucial factor: the population of China is approximately 1.3 billion
people, over four times that of the USA, the previous largest emitter. In other words, the
per capita carbon emissions of the Chinese people are around a quarter of those of the

average American (and a third of that of the average Briton). The failure to acknowledge
this fact is another common feature of corrupted decision-making, in this case known as
‘base-rate neglect’. So a legitimate reconstrual of this particularly damaging NET might
encourage the originator to agree to set (as a target) the reduction of their own personal
carbon emissions to those of the average Chinese person. Were they to achieve this, they
would have met the UK Government’s carbon-reduction target for around the year 2040.
A different perspective indeed.
This last NET is illustrative of a particular feature of negative thoughts, namely that it
doesn’t take many, indeed sometimes only one, to block entirely a change in behaviour.
There is a fearful asymmetry here: a large number of reasons for change can be negated by
a single negative thought, even if that negative thought represents a cognitively distorted
perspective on the world. For this reason, close attention to Thoughts, the third of our
HOT topics, is likely to be a necessary component of a pro-environmental psychology.
Real behaviour change

We are not alone in seeking to apply the techniques of CBT beyond the therapeutic
domain and into business contexts. Indeed, in recent years there has been a development
of frameworks for so-called Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC). For example, Palmer
(2007) developed such a framework that he called PRACTICE, each of the letters in the
acronym representing a stage in CBC-style problem-focussed approach: Problem
identification; developing Realistic goals; generating Alternative solutions; Considering the
consequences of each; Targeting feasible solutions; Implementing Chosen solutions; and
Evaluation. What is striking about this list is how similar it is to the specifically
environmentally oriented stepwise model of Dahlstrand and Biel (1997) described above.
This confluence is encouraging, because it situates pro-environmental behaviour change in
a more generic framework, albeit one on which it has not, until now, substantially drawn.
To recap, Dahlstrand and Biel’s model was a model of ‘behavioural change towards a pro-
environmental habit’. Up until now, we have emphasised the initial steps in modifying a
client’s attentional stance (Opportunities) and in encouraging a different perspective on
negative or unhelpful Thoughts. While these steps are necessary, in this last section we
acknowledge that they are unlikely to be sufficient to ensure that behaviour change
accrues.
Among many practitioners of what was once called Cognitive Therapy, there is now an
acceptance that cognitive changes are not enough by themselves to secure a behavioural
change, particularly when the prior (problematic) behaviour has acquired the status of a
habit (or a ‘rule for living’). For this reason, practitioners began drawing upon the
techniques of Behaviour Therapy, techniques which themselves had been heavily
influenced by animal learning theory. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (in various flavours,
including Beck’s classical CBT, Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and Lazarus’s
Multimodal Therapy) emerged. A key observation was that deep (sometimes called ‘gut
level’) acceptance of the benefits of change could only be properly achieved by
encouraging the client to engage in a series of small-scale behavioural experiments. The
results of these experiments were then fed back in such a way as to assist in the further
breaking down of negative patterns of behaviour, including negative patterns of thought.
To develop the example given above, a person with social phobia, confined to their home,
72 Going Green:
might be encouraged to accompany the therapist to the front gate of the garden,
notwithstanding their possibly dire predictions of what might happen as a result. On
learning that the expected disaster failed to occur (note: if the client’s thinking is
genuinely disordered then the therapist relies on the fact that the predicted disaster is
indeed highly unlikely), the client is able to modify their cognitions at a rather deeper level
than they could simply by sitting in the home and thinking, however rationally, about the
matter. The client is, therefore, facilitated in acting like a scientist, with themselves and
their beliefs and dispositions as the object of study. Once the garden gate has been
conquered, the next experiment might involve a trip to the end of the street, then to the
local shop, and so on.
Therefore the notion that clients progress in large measure by doing rather than thinking,
and by observing that their predictions (thoughts) about the consequences of such action
are faulty, is properly acknowledged in the cognitive behavioural therapies. It is also
explicitly acknowledged in both the problem-focussed model of Palmer (2007) and the
stepwise model of Dahlstrand and Biel (1997): both subsume the planning, testing and
evaluation of new behaviours. Another framework in which this insight (i.e. that progress
relies on, and indeed comprises, ‘doing something different’) is the Framework for
Internal Transformation (FIT; Fletcher & Stead, 2000).
FIT comprises a collection of psychometrically validated tools (principally, the FIT
Profiler) and a variety of behavioural interventions (principally, a Do Something Different,
DSD, programme), all targeted at identifying and moderating a participant’s degree of
behavioural flexibility. Recent practical applications have been in the domain of weight loss
(Fletcher, Hanson, Pine & Page, in press; Fletcher, Page, & Pine, 2007; Page & Fletcher,
2008), though the approach is, by its nature, generic. The FIT Profiler measures behaviour
on 15 behavioural dimensions, specifically measuring the degree of flexibility in each. It
also measures five ‘Inner Constancies’ (Awareness, Balance, Conscience, Fearlessness and
Self-Responsibility), in an acknowledgement that thinking-style too can be prone to
inflexibility and habit. Unlike other personality measures, the FIT Profiler emphasises the
idea that for maximum effectiveness one would not want to be located at any given point
along a particular dimension. For example, taking an Introversion-Extraversion dimension,
it is clear that there will be some times at which one might best behave in an introverted
fashion (e.g. a funeral), and some times when extraverted behaviour would be appropriate
(e.g. a party). The FIT Profiler measures such behavioural flexibility and directs its
development.
As noted above, the primary FIT intervention is a Do Something Different (DSD)
programme. Taking weight-loss as an example, this programme invites participants to
engage in a programme of doing something different every day for a month (with two
additional tasks each week). Across the four weeks of the intervention, the focus changes
from new behaviours (weeks 1–2), to new ways of interacting with people (week 3) and
behaviours relating to the Constancies (week 4). Importantly, these DSD tasks are not
themselves food or exercise related, but might be as simple as writing to an old friend,
going to the theatre, or shopping at a different shop. The driving credo is that habits are
not independent one from another, but exist in a mutually supporting network of habit-
webs (cf. Neal, Wood & Quinn, 2006). If one comes home at the same time every day,
having shopped in the same shops, to watch the same TV programmes, etc., then it is very

difficult simply to change, in isolation, the amount, or nature, of what one eats. By
breaking down the distal habits that form the habit-web in which the proximal eating and
exercise habits reside, the DSD programme seeks to enhance generic flexibility. It seeks to
put people into a (psychological) place in which they can change anything about
themselves, before attempting to change a particular habit. As such, it comprises
behavioural experiment at a generic level, designed to reinforce the belief that flexibility
and change are a defining feature of a true comfort zone.
Although we have only been able to give a very brief description of the FIT tools and FIT
interventions, their generic nature encourages us that they might usefully be applied in
other domains, notably in regard to pro-environmental behaviour change. Theoretical
work concerning habits and the ‘habit-goal interface’ (Wood & Neal, 2007), identifies
overlearned context-to-behaviour associations as crucial to the maintenance of habitual
behaviour. By establishing new contexts, a DSD programme can prevent this automatic
activation, and can sow the seed of effective change. For this reason, we are actively
engaged in adapting FIT to the pro-environmental cause.
Conclusions
In this paper, we have argued for a degree of eclecticism in psychological approaches to
pro-environmental behaviour change. Taking inspiration from areas beyond the more
frequently applied (and not obviously successful) single-track interventions, we have
argued for a broader framework organised around the mnemonically useful HOT topics:
Habits, Opportunities and Thoughts. We propose that the field will benefit from additional
insights from cognitive psychology (in relation to attentional stance and rational decision
making), cognitive behavioural therapies (in relation to NETs and the power of
behavioural experiments), and from FIT science (in relation to its emphasis on enabling
generic behavioural flexibility as an engine of change). Our current work involves bringing
these insights together in a practical programme for businesses and individuals alike.
74 Going Green:
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Green behaviour change: A case study of Eco Concierge
Karen Anderton & Kirsten Jack, Eco Concierge
‘Tell me and I will forget, show me and I might remember, involve me and I will understand.’
Chinese proverb
Two of the significant issues that have been reported as having a negative influence on the
extent to which people engage in green behaviour such as recycling, related to their pre-
conceived ideas and attitudes about such behaviour (e.g. Nigbur, Lyons & Uzzell, 2010)
and the inconvenience which they perceive it engenders (e.g. Tucker & Speirs, 2003).
Eco Concierge was established in 2009 with the sole mandate of challenging such ideas and
removing those barriers – essentially to take the hassle out of being green. In one sense, a
concierge service that works with individuals and businesses to help them green their
lifestyles and operations. It therefore represents one way in which organisations can
become greener and also can help their employees do so. However, it is also much more
than this; by emphasising the need to go green without compromising the perspectives,
values and character of its clients and also by specialising in green behaviour change that
uses proven behavioural change research as a basis for the development of an effective
service operation, it aims to enable deep, significant and lasting change towards a greener
future.
The work of Eco Concierge is underpinned by the UK government’s Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) Pro-Environmental Behaviours
Framework. Individuals’ uniquely-held values, as well as their lifestyle and stage, result in
dramatically different perspectives on environmental issues. By tailoring messages to reflect
a deeper understanding of each personal outlook, it’s possible to deliver solutions that
appeal to individuals; not only achieving initial behaviour change at the point of
interaction, but also long-term habit and lifestyle change.
The absolute starting point for Eco Concierge and its modus operandi is the fact that three
out of five people in the UK want to be greener but don’t know where to start (or what to
do next), or don’t have the time to make the changes. These numbers are based on an
array of segmentation evidence in this field including DEFRA’s pro-environment
behaviours work, recycling, energy conservation and uptake of organic food studies and
Marks and Spencer’s internal market research. Crudely put, around 36 million of the
people in the UK could contribute to a less environmentally impactful society, but they
either haven’t been engaged, or aren’t being served the right information. Tapping into
this potential would close a substantial gap in the market and move us a long way towards a
more sustainable future. We’ll come back to this. But firstly, it is important to examine the
significance of individual behaviour change and why – as we’ve seen in our work –
engaging with businesses to motivate their employees to be greener is effective.
76 Going Green:
The context
The work conducted to date on behaviour change theory is vast; that on environmental
behaviours specifically is evolving and deepening at a rapid rate.
A recent WWF report said, ‘It is now beyond dispute that any proportional response to
today’s environmental challenges will require profound changes to the way that most
people in developed countries, and many of the richer people in developing countries,
choose to live. This will entail widespread but far-reaching changes in individual behaviour,
fundamental changes in business practice, and the implementation of ambitious new
policies and regulations to drive these changes by government.’ (WWF, 2009)
Taking this and the numerous other calls to action into consideration, Eco Concierge aims
to facilitate the change through enhancing the effectiveness and rate of individual
behaviour change. To date our work has been most successful through taking our
approach and applying it to employee engagement initiatives within public and private
sector organisations. The missing link in effective Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
engagement strategies often stems from failing to take the environmental management
systems through which many companies operate much of their policy in this area, and
make it directly relevant to, and involve employees. In this case study, we briefly summarise
how we have reached this conclusion and outline how we have used this information to
enact a practical and successful business proposition.
Corporate social responsibility and the primacy of employee

engagement
First we need to understand why CSR has become a central pillar in many businesses.
According to Rochlin and Boguslaw (2001), there are multiple drivers that
influence/motivate corporate behaviour:
■ Values: based on personal morals, and a desire to ‘give back’ to society.
■ Compliance: government regulations and grass-roots activists create compliance
pressures.
■ Intangibles: intangible factors include reputation, brand and relationships.
■ Market: market drivers lead to ‘typical’ projects and investments, such as product
launches, production, purchasing or employee training.
As an attempt to deliver against one or all of these objectives, CSR has emerged over the
past decade as an influencing factor of corporate behaviour and response to
environmental issues is now considered one of the fundamental offerings that ‘should’ be
delivered in this realm. Yet several shortcomings have been identified in current CSR
approaches; by using information on the identified gaps which exist in this area, Eco
Concierge’s approach is designed to remove barriers or improve existing strategies.
Googins (2002) has argued that conventional approaches to CSR are limited due to the
boundaries in which the area has developed. The following areas were identified as
barriers to successful CSR.
■ Over-reliance on philanthropy.
■ Weak brand for corporate citizenship.

■ Citizenship fragmented across the organisation.
■ The shareholder stranglehold.
■ Programmes versus practices.
Added to these factors is the lack of understanding about issues across the spectrum of a
company and a lack of ownership of the work internally. Typically CSR doesn’t fall into
central business activities, so is frequently the first area to be disbanded, or is often offered
only rhetoric in day-to-day business. Pedersen and Neergaard (2008) state that in order to
move beyond the rhetoric of CSR one of the first steps is to embed social and
environmental concerns into the strategic management and performance measurement
systems that increasingly guide corporate decision-making and behaviour.
A recent study (Runhar, Tighelaar & Vermeulen, 2008) confirms that a lack of knowledge
by employees and employees not being eco-minded were both significant barriers to a
company’s environmental leadership; these barriers need to be overcome if corporate
strategies are to truly reflect the rhetoric of proactive environmental leadership. Education
and training of employees needs to be tailored to better engage them on issues. CSR is
unlikely to permeate the organisation unless social and environmental concerns are
integrated in the management frameworks and measurement tools of the business
mainstream.
Engaging with employees and empowering them to act through the company in a non-
superficial way is a most effective means through which to increase output towards and
ultimately achieve or enhance environmental strategies and goals. It has been identified
that employees are also compelled by a company’s CSR activities. Indeed, companies
pushing the boundaries on CSR activities and prioritising this area of activity offer a
legitimate way to attract and retain good employees, indeed, many companies big and
small, including Cisco Systems, General Electric and IBM, view employee engagement in
CSR as a ‘strategic imperative’ (Bhattacharya, Sen & Korschun, 2008).
Evidence on the appeal of strong environmental strategies for prospective employees
should not be underestimated. According to a survey of recent US graduates from
recruitment firm MonsterTRAK, 80 per cent of respondents said they are interested in a
job that has a positive impact on the environment, with 92 per cent stating they would
choose an environmentally friendly employer(MonsterTRAK, 2007).
But few organisations have figured out how to use CSR properly as part of their employee
engagement efforts. They fall short of communicating their CSR intentions and initiatives
to their employees and tend to keep CSR decisions in the hands of senior managers. At the
same time, they fail to understand which CSR initiatives work best to excite which groups
of employees. All in all, they fail to capture CSR’s considerable potential to help them fight
the war for talent (Bhattacharya et al., 2008).
Employees will always vary in terms of knowledge about the issue and also willingness to
act. A central element in Eco Concierge’s approach comes from identifying individuals
that are keen to take action and use them as internal champions; inviting employees to
develop, influence and manage the process will also empower them to get involved.
Ensuring that all employees are aware of environmental-related activities that are planned
or in progress will encourage those that are not so engaged to better understand what is
78 Going Green:
taking place. We know that communicating the initiatives and actions to employees is
paramount for achieving success (McDonald, 2007). Similarly, in keeping the initiatives in
employees’ minds and to maintain interest, periodic communications and events can be
effective.We have also found that a common frustration and even cause of stress amongst
professionals is not having the time to organise their personally green lives, hence the
value of linking workplace programmes to Eco Concierge’s individual offer for employees
at home.
When used properly, CSR can strengthen employees' engagement by creating the feeling
that they are part of a larger corporate mission and that the company shares their values, as
well as by helping them enhance their own social connections (McDonald, 2007). By
offering a tailored approach to employee engagement or empowerment, Eco Concierge is
able to facilitate the achievement of company objectives by effectively working with
employees to integrate positive changes made at home and at work into their professional
lives and thus the business. Furthermore, by initiating a whole-of-company ethos, Eco
Concierge attempts to create linkages between social, environment, marketing, human
resources and other organisational entities;therefore ensuring that environmental
objectives are anchored within a strategic framework strongly linked to a clear competitive
advantage (Googins, 2002).
The case of Eco Concierge

At the moment sustainability initiatives generally fall into one of two categories:
infrastructure change or mass communication campaigns. Eco Concierge, along with a few
other niche companies, have differentiated by specialising in behaviour change, viewing
this niche as a low-cost, high-impact and long-term solution that allows sustainable living
to mean something to everyone. Eco Concierge is a social enterprise that helps individuals
and businesses to take their own ‘journeys’ towards greener living. For individuals, we do
this by understanding their lifestyle, values and current environmental impacts. Once we
have this information, we are then able to create personalised action plans which we then
deliver. For businesses, we engage employees in company environmental objectives, and
offer our individual services as a means of creating an important link between business
principles and employees’ values to build a more engaged workforce and efficient
operating model.
Services range from a full lifestyle overhaul to ethical personal styling or home renovation.
Whether it’s switching to renewable energy, having a sustainable wedding/baby/holiday,
insulating a home, stopping junk mail, buying a new boiler or reducing water use, the aim
is to find the best solution for a given person at a given time, through understanding their
values and perspectives. This derives from our three core objectives, which are:
1. to be sustainable – in purpose and operation;
2. to increase the accessibility, number and quality of opportunities for individual
sustainable behaviour changes and decision making; and
3. to offer excellent client experiences that maximise the lasting impact of green
behaviour change.

Eco Concierge is not a typical company. It is one of a growing breed of hybrid
organisations, a for-profit enterprise whose mandate is to promote a social and public good
and to conduct business ethically. The overarching aim is to help people make a positive
environmental difference to their lives. With a company like this, it’s not about retrofit
‘embedding responsible values’ as other companies have to do; it was the values of the
people who work there that created the company and which continues to drive it. Our
mission is to have a net positive effect on the world.
The Eco Concierge approach

We retain our competitive edge by working from a strong research base.We are taking steps
to ensure that we keep ahead of the curve as behaviour change is proven on a wider scale.
While green behaviour change is a major growth area for employee and customer
engagement within large companies, the breadth of knowledge and action, personalisation
and proven sustainability impact combine with our research-based approach to make us
unique and successful. We have no direct competitors in operation at the moment.
Most importantly, our approach targets and works with those people who do not pick up on
mass media communications, because they don’t identify with the agenda. The premise
behind this stems from the idea that there are different types of ‘green’ – some people who
identify with the agenda, and some who don’t but aren’t adverse to adopting sustainable
behaviours if engaged at a level on which they identify. DEFRA (2008) developed this
segmentation model (see Figure 1) and Eco Concierge attempts to engage the segments of
society identified as having the potential to be greener.
Figure 1: The seven population segments

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80 Going Green:
Drawing on our own experience of working with clients, as well as other research on
segmentation and DEFRA’s segmentation model, Eco Concierge have devised an approach
which identifies four behavioural types (see Figure 2). Our clustering of behaviours is
based on developing the segmentation developed by DEFRA to make it more commercially
applicable. It is also key to adopt an approach which is more meaningful to actual
consumer experiences. Two sectors mentioned in Figure 1 (‘honestly disengaged’ and
‘stalled starters’) are specifically not targeted through our work.
Figure 2: Eco Concierge behaviour segment model
1. 2.
“I like to show my support for green issues

“I’m careful about saving money where I
– I’d be up for buying a Prius and things like
can. I can see the value of ‘waste not, want
those cool Stella McCartney t-shirts or RED
not’ in other areas of my life too”
ones that support AIDS charities”
Waste not want not – 12% of the population Conscious consumer – 14% of the
population
3. 4.
“I do some things to help the environment,

“The Earth has very limited room and
but it’s hard to do everything. I am most
resources so people who fly should bear the
likely to do something if I see others
cost of the environmental damage that air
making the effort too, because it feels more travel causes”
fair”
I will if you will (groups together two of Positive green – 18% of the population
DEFRA segments ‘side-line supporters and
cautious participants’) – 28% of the
population
We further couple the segmentation model on environmental considerations with a similar

‘values’ matrix based on Dynamic Maslow Group Theory to allow us an even better
understanding of client perspectives and therefore the subsequent response we can deliver.
Of course, there will be differences in declared versus actual behaviour at times, but the
‘faces’ are designed to hold equal appeal or status so that there should not be a feeling of
any ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer. Ascertaining to which group an individual most identifies
with allows us to respond with solutions and actions which will appeal. We don’t just
provide standard services with minimal impact; by combining these approaches when
conducting initial consultation, we are able to tailor our work to reflect individual values.

In addition to the identification exercise, our first interaction with all clients also includes
a baseline ‘ecological footprint’ calculation, following the methodology developed by the
Stockholm Environment Institute. This allows us to calculate a person’s holistic
environmental impact. By determining ‘how many planets’ a lifestyle is consuming, we can
assess the reduction in impact our solutions will offer. We work on the premise that our
services will deliver a minimum client reduction of 10 per cent footprint, which taking the
UK average (3 planets) is a third of a planet. However, since our client base to date has
been the more affluent market, we are finding that clients have a higher than average
footprint, which offers more scope for action and therefore bigger absolute reduction in
environmental impact as a result.
Conclusion
In Britain, a majority of people say they would like to do more to live sustainably – a
positive life with limited impact – but do not do so because of the range of practical and
perceived barriers discussed here. Eco Concierge has delivered numerous innovative and
reactive projects and is developing from its beginnings and the proof-of-concept work to
the development of robust programmes aimed at influencing behaviour change and habit.
This is often a crucial missing component in work aimed at reducing negative
environmental impacts, whereas it constitutes the central pillar for Eco Concierge. As
thought leaders in the area of behaviour change for sustainable lifestyles, our ‘whole
perspective’ stance, which incorporates an ecological footprint measurement and personal
values, and our environmental perspective ‘segment’ identification gives us an operating
model which is effective in engaging people who ordinarily wouldn’t feel engaged to
deliver change beyond expectations. For Eco Concierge it is and will remain our main
objective to help as many people as possible live greener lives.
82 Going Green:
References
Bhattacharya, C.B., Sen, S. & Korschun, D. (2008). Using corporate social responsibility to
win the war for talent. MIT Sloan Management Review, 49(2).
Googins, B. (2002). The journey towards corporate citizenship in the United States. Leader
or laggard?, pp.85–101. Greenleaf Publishing.
McDonald, G. (2207). In-house climate change: Use communication to engage employees
in environmental initiatives. Communications World, Nov-Dec. Retrieved from
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_6_24/ai_n21119945
MonsterTRAK (2007). MonsterTRAK joins forces with ecoAmerica to launch green
careers. Press release, retrieved from http://phx.corporate-ir.net/
phoenix.zhtml?c=131001&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1058413&highlight
Nigbur, D., Lyons, E. & Uzzell, D. (2010). Attitudes, norms, identity and environmental
behaviour: Using an expanded theory of planned behaviour to predict participation
in a kerbside recycling programme. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 259–284.
Pedersen, E.R. & Neergaard, P. (2008). From periphery to center: How CSR is integrated
in mainstream performance management frameworks. Measuring Business Excellence,
(12)1, 4–12.
Rochlin, S.A. & Boguslaw, J. (2001). Business and community development: Aligning
corporate performance with community economic development to achieve win-win
impacts. Boston: The Center of Corporate Citizenship.
Runhaar, H., Tigchelaar, C. & Vermeulen, W.J.V. (2008). Environmental leaders: making a
difference. A typology of environmental leaders and recommendations for a
differentiated policy approach. Business Strategy and the Environment, 17, 160–178.
Stockholm Environment Institute (2010). http://sei-international.org/reap. Retrieved 15
December 2010.
Tucker, P. & Speirs, D. (2003). Attitudes and behavioural change in household waste
management behaviours. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 46,(2),
pp. 289-307.
WWF (2009). Simple and painless: The limitations of spillover in environmental
campaigning. Retrieved 20 February 2009 from http://www.wwf.org.uk/
wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=2728.

Promoting environmental behaviour in the workplace:
A survey of UK organisations
Dr Lara Zibarras & Catrin Ballinger, City University, London
This chapter aims to provide an insight into the approaches that organisations currently
take to encourage pro-environmental behaviour among their staff and to consider the role
that Human Resource (HR) departments could play in managing and implementing
environmental initiatives and engaging employees to behave in a more pro-environmental
way. It is based on the findings from a UK-wide survey of organisations, exploring the
approaches that companies take to encourage pro-environmental behaviour among their
employees (Zibarras & Ballinger, 2011).
The survey examined green initiatives being used by organisations and looks at where
responsibility lies within the organisation for the implementation and management of
green initiatives. It also examines which methods organisations have used to encourage
staff to behave in a pro-environmental way. The chapter also explores whether
organisations have evaluated the effectiveness of their environmental initiatives on
employee behaviour, what the perceived facilitators and barriers to effective environmental
practices are within the organisation, and the role of organisational culture. Work and
organisational psychologists can play a key role in designing and implementing initiatives
aimed at changing organisations and the pro-environmental behaviour of their employees;
however, it is also necessary for a wider engagement of organisational actors and the paper
therefore concludes with a call for HR personnel to play a larger role and become more
involved in making green initiatives mainstream throughout an organisation’s culture.
The green agenda for business

The context within which businesses operate is changing: water scarcity, energy problems, a
depletion of natural resources, poverty and increased waste are all having a negative impact
on the way organisations function. Governments worldwide have increasingly challenged
organisations to address their environmental and social performance in addition to economic
performance. Businesses have responded to this green agenda in varying ways, including a
detailed consideration of the business case for integrating sustainability into their business
strategies. The big challenge for businesses consists of how to formulate and implement these
green initiatives and it is here that psychology plays a key role because it is only through
changing the behaviour of individuals that the problems of sustainability can be addressed.
According to a recent survey, 93 per cent of chief executive officers (CEOs) surveyed believe that
sustainability is important to the future success of their company (Accenture, 2010). In addition, 81
per cent believe that sustainability is already ‘fully embedded into the strategy and operations of their
company’. It is important that organisations are seen to be taking their impact on the environment
seriously, not only because of the business benefits this accrues. The role of business in saving the
planet is much wider than simply being seen to be green – as previous research has shown, a
84 Going Green:
perceived lack of action by business is a significant barrier to engaging with climate change among
the UK public (Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole & Whitmarsh, 2007). There are many areas of potential
benefit that a new sustainable approach business can bring, but the role of employee behaviour in
delivering the necessary environmental improvements to organisations has been largely overlooked
(Davis & Challenger, 2009). This chapter goes some way to addressing this oversight by examining
what UK organisations are currently doing and highlighting the huge potential that work and
organisational psychology has to further inform the practice of HR professionals in the engagement
of employees and the facilitation of an organisational culture shift to a greener business future. Here
we present a snapshot of some of the key findings from the survey, based on a sample of 147 UK
organisations of various sizes and from both the public and the private sectors. Further details about
the survey and more in-depth findings are available from Zibarras and Ballinger (2011)
Current environmental initiatives

The survey revealed that a large proportion organisations are currently engaging in a wide
range of environmental initiatives (see Figure 1). Some headline figures are that:
■ the most popular environmental initiative is the recycling of waste materials, with 86
per cent of organisations reporting that they have a recycling scheme in place;
■ the majority of organisations (77 per cent) have an environmental policy in place
within their organisation;
■ sustainable sourcing of green energy and food were among the least common
environmental initiatives, with less than 20 per cent of organisations using such
initiatives. Carbon offsetting was the least popular with just 10 per cent of
organisations committed to this scheme.
Figure 1: Current environmental initiatives
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Who is responsible for environmental initiatives within
organisations?
The research revealed that the responsibility for implementing and managing
environmental initiatives lies with different functions and actors across different
organisations (see Figure 2). The majority of organisations reported that such
responsibility is distributed across all staff in the organisation, whereas other organisations
allocated the responsibility to specific teams or functional areas, such as the HR
department or the property and facilities team. Fifteen per cent of organisations had a
team specifically working on corporate social responsibility.
Figure 2: Responsibility for environmental initiatives

Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour at work

The research examined how organisations encourage pro-environmental behaviour at
work and what methods are successful. Figure 3 reveals that fewer than 45 per cent of
organisations had integrated environmental concerns into their organisational vision or
mission statement. Yet this method represents the most common means of encouraging
staff to behave in a pro-environmental way. Informal encouragement by line management
and active championing by senior management were common in 38 per cent of
organisations. Reward programmes and promotion decisions were among the least
common methods of engagement. Just 2 per cent of organisations use penalties for non-
compliance.
Respondents rated internal awareness-raising campaigns and active championing by senior
management and green champions or green teams as the most effective ways of
encouraging pro-environmental behaviour (see Figure 4). The least successful method was
overwhelmingly perceived to be penalties for non-compliance, followed by the inclusion of
environmental concerns in the organisation vision or mission statement. However, it is
important to note that most organisations did not actually evaluate the methods they used
to engage staff, with just 16% of organisations agreed that they have done something,
whereas 65% said they had not. Of those who reported that they had done an evaluation,
the most common method of evaluation was measuring and monitoring energy
consumption and the amount of waste.
86 Going Green:
Figure 3: Methods used by organisations to encourage pro-environmental behaviour
In organisational vision/mission statement !

Informal encouragement by line management
Actively championed by senior management
Encouraged via internal awareness-raising campaigns/
publicity etc
Set up of green champions/task force/green team etc.
Induction programmes that emphasise environmental !
issues/concerns
Performance indicators that include environmental
behaviour/targets
Training courses aimed at developing environmental
behaviour
Engagement workshops or forums for staff
Leadership/management training on environmental issues
Environmental impact factored into team/departmental
budgets
Recruitment & selection criteria that recognise
environmental commitment
Individual incentives or reward programmes !
Team incentives or reward programmes
Promotion decisions
Organisation-based incentives or bonus schemes
Penalties for non-compliance !

Figure 4: Most and least effective practice used by organisations

to encourage pro-environmental behaviour
Top 5 practices considered most effective by organisations
to encourage employees to be pro-environmental
Ranking No. of orgs
Encouraged via internal awareness-raising campaigns/publicity etc. e.g.
1st 29
series of lectures/seminars/debates for employees, posters etc.
2nd Actively championed by senior management 25
3rd Set up of green champions/task force/green team etc. 2

Induction programmes that emphasise environmental
4th 19
issues/concerns
5th Informal encouragement by line management 18
Top 5 practices considered least effective by organisations
to encourage employees to be pro-environmental
1st Penalties for non-compliance 17
2nd In organisational vision/mission statement 10

Recruitment and selection criteria that recognise environmental
3rd 8
behaviour/commitment
4th Promotion decisions 7
5th= Informal encouragement by line management 6
5th= Set up of green champions/task force/green team etc. 6

Barriers and facilitators of pro-environmental practices
The survey asked about barriers and facilitators of pro-environmental practices (see Figure
5) and the results indicated that effective environmental practices were facilitated by
Managers' support and openness to pro-environmental practices, the commitment of
Senior management and the engagement and commitment from staff. Conversely, the top
three barriers were a lack of management commitment and/or support, a lack of
engagement or commitment from staff and an unclear leadership strategy and set of goals
relating to environmental issues.
Figure 5: Barriers and facilitators of pro-environmental practices
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88 Going Green:
Promoting a culture of pro-environmental behaviour
The survey revealed that only a small majority of organisations (56 per cent) agreed that
environmental concerns are important to their organisation, although there does seem to
be a feeling that the organisation is taking some role in environmental issues, with the
majority of respondents agreeing that their organisation does its bit to protect the
environment and that their organisation is interested in developing pro-environmental
behaviour. While the recent economic and financial crisis might be suspected to have
reduced the importance of the green agenda, most organisations in the survey disagreed
that this was the case. Just 38 per cent of respondents agreed that their management
practices actively enhance and encourage environmental behaviour, and one third agreed
that their managers provide practical support for environmental behaviour or practices.
This is despite managers’ support and senior management commitment being seen as the
top two facilitators for effective environmental practices within organisations. Rewarding
green behaviour and setting personal development objectives in relation to environmental
behaviour were among the least popular means of promoting a green organisational
culture. Once again, penalising the failure to demonstrate pro-environmental behaviour
was the least popular concept among organisations.
Key take-home message

While this chapter provides only a brief snapshot of our survey results (as previously
indicated, further details are available from Zibarras and Ballinger, 2011), it does illustrate
at least one clear take-home message in terms of facilitating pro-environmental behaviour
and that is the role of management in terms of both senior management teams and the
role of line managers. Senior management commitment and line management support are
perceived to be amongst the most important and the most successful methods of
encouraging pro-environmental practices in the organisation and behaviour of individuals,
with a lack of management commitment/support perceived to be the most important
barrier. However, only 38 per cent of organisations use informal encouragement by line
management and senior management championing as a method of encouraging staff to
behave pro-environmentally, and only 38 per cent of respondents agree that management
practices within their organisation actively enhance and encourage environmental
behaviour. Furthermore, just 35 per cent agree that managers understand that it is part of
their job to operate in an environmentally friendly way, with only a third agreeing that
managers provide practical support for environmental behaviour/practices. What this
selection of statistics tells us is that there is clearly more work to be done. While many
organisations claim that sustainability is important to them, the extent to which people
specialists within organisations have been engaged by management to design, implement
and evaluate initiatives aimed at increasing pro-environmental behaviour is limited.

References
Accenture (2010). A new era of sustainability: UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study 2010.
Retrieved 1 September 2010 from https://microsite.accenture.com/sustainability/
research_and_insights/Pages/A-New-Era-of-Sustainability.aspx
Davis, M.C. & Challenger, R. (2009).Climate change – warming to the task. The Psychologist,
22, 112–114.
Lorenzoni, I., Nicholson-Cole, S. & Whitmarsh, L. (2007). Barriers perceived to engaging
with climate change among the UK public and their policy implications. Global
Environmental Change, 17, 445–459.
Zibarras, L. & Ballinger, C. (2011). Promoting environmental behaviour in the workplace: A
survey of UK organisations. A report produced by the Department of Psychology, City
University, London for British Psychological Society Division of Occupational
Psychology Green Working Group. Leicester: British Psychological Society.
ISBN 978-1-85433-713-9
The British Psychological Society
St Andrews House, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 7DR, UK
Tel: 0116 254 9568 Fax 0116 247 0787 E-mail: mail@bps.org.uk Website: www.bps.org.uk
Incorporated by Royal Charter Registered Charity No 229642 INF/183/03/2011

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INF183 03/2011 ISBN 978-1-85433-713-9

Incorporated by Royal Charter Registered Charity No 229642

Dean Bartlett, London Metropolitan University

The green organisational imperative

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 1

Adjusting to new ways of working

Green work performance

The psychology of going green

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 3

Current organisational praxes and future directions in the

Professor Dean Bartlett, PhD, CPsyhol, CSci

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 5

Anna Kane, Ampleo

How does an organisation seek to green itself?

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 7

How and why should an organisation recruit and develop staff so it

Figure 1: Motivational feeds

Psychological rewards that come from

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 9

Figure 2: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Feelings of belonging, friendship or being loved, which can only be satisfied

Mainly intrinsic in nature Features of the work environment rather

Factors that If not present, can

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 11

How are things going to change?

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 13

Establish the Strategy and vision

Plan Longer Understanding

Action planning The communication

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 15

A few examples of areas for longer term planning:

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 17

Julian Feasby and Karen Wells, The Environment Agency

Improving our own environmental performance

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 19

How do we engage our staff and change behaviour?

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 21

Getting staff to work for you

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 23

Example – offering a choice of operational vehicle

Example – Sorting rubbish

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 25

Internal environment management is first on the agenda at our managers’ four-day

Example – Wind turbines

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 27

6) Find the more vocal staff members

7) Inclusive green groups and an Idea scheme

8) Limit or remove their choices

9) Constant badgering – relentless but consistent

Example – footers on e-mails

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 29

…and finally, make it fun!

Mindy Hadi and Chloe Halfhide, BRE

Recognising the role of occupant behaviour

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 31

Large banks of switches with no labels or

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 33

The Psychology of Sustainability in the Workplace 35

Richard Parker, Boots Opticians

Why do businesses need to measure environmental performance?